Linear models for plasma current control in tokamak reactors

The control of plasma in nuclear fusion has been revealed as a promising application of Control Engineering, with increasing interest in the control community during last years. In this paper it is developed a control-oriented linear model for the control of plasma current. For this purpose, it is provided a summary of the background necessary to deal with control problems in tokamak-based nuclear fusion reactors as it is the case of the future ITER tokamak. Besides, it is also given a review of the most used simulators and plasma models, with the aim of providing an adequate background for control engineers to derive their own control-oriented model or to choose the appropriate existing one. Finally, the proposed plasma model performance is proven in a current drive profile trajectory tracking problem using a modified anti-windup PID-based control scheme.