Development of the EAST central timing system based on PXI

The Central Timing System (CTS) is an important part of the central control system on the experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST), which is one of the national key fusion research projects in China. The purpose of this system is to synchronize each subsystem in EAST experiments. The CTS provides reference clock signals with frequency range from 1 Hz to 80 MHz based on PXI devices. It also produces trigger signals in pre-defined delay from 1 ms up to about 6872 s by using FPGA on the RIO module. This system is able to acquire signal, process it and send output or command to the other system. The CTS has successfully been applied to 2010 fall EAST experiment, and the application shows that this system runs stably and accurately. (authors)