As magnetic confinement devices move toward higher fusion powers, moderating the heat load to the plasma-facing components becomes increasingly challenging. Efficient power dissipation can be achieved through control of the plasma radiation. However, defining a reliable proxy for the total radiated power is particularly challenging for non-axisymmetric devices such as stellarators. To address this problem, the radiated power can be estimated through a sum of the individual line-integrated bolometer measurements with weights properly calculated to account for the three-dimensional magnetic geometry. The present contribution aims to apply this weighted sum approach to Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) and quantitatively validate it. First, we generate synthetic radiated power phantoms with characteristic W7-X radiation features to derive a set of optimized line-of-sight weights. Then, we test the weights on mock-ups and EMC3-EIRENE radiation patterns, including acquisition and analysis errors such as random noise fluctuations, camera misalignments, and field errors. Compared to other methods, the optimized weighted sum technique exhibited the best performance in all the presented synthetic test cases. When applied to experimental bolometer data, the optimized weights provided a proxy that is both reliable and real-time capable. Further validation is foreseen for the next experimental campaign.
This paper presents a method to accurately estimate the total radiated power in the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) stellarator device. The authors use a weighted sum of individual bolometer measurements to account for the complex 3D magnetic geometry, improving on previous methods. They validate the technique using synthetic radiation patterns and experimental data, showing it is reliable and real-time capable.