Thomson scattering upgrade on Tore Supra

The Thomson scattering diagnostic supplies the electron temperature and density of Tore Supra plasmas from the spectrum analysis of scattered light of a very short laser pulse. A new spectrometer has been realized to improve the signal to noise ratio. In order to obtain an efficient noise reduction, a real time calculation is necessary. The current analogue integration of the signal is inadequate. A fast digitalization must be used with a sampling rate of 1 GSamples/s, a bandwidth of 150 MHz and a 12 bits dynamic range. In a first step, fast analogue data acquisition boards for 4 channels were added in 2009 to the VME acquisition system in place. A MATACQ (Matrix for acquisition) board was chosen for sampling analogue data up to 2 GSamples/s over 4 channels with a large bandwidth of 300 MHz and a 14 bits dynamic range. This solution offers a low cost acquisition system that is not available in any other commercial board with this dynamic range. The first results will be obtained on calibration period with a light emitted diode before the summer 2009. This article will present the new data acquisition system and the coming first results.