Main features of plasma control

In the recent years Plasma Control has always increased his importance in any advanced experiment. It is now clear that ITER will not be able to operate without a quite advanced and sophisticated control apparatus. Necessarily this system will have to integrate several different aspects of the Plasma behavior. One of the most important parts of a closed loop control system is the quality of the measurement of the plasma parameters that should be controlled. Eventually, this aspect involves sophisticated and complex diagnostic apparatus. This paper presents an overview of the present status, and further studies and developments needed, in the next future, for the design and realization of an integrated plasma control system aimed at both stabilizing the plasma non-axisymmetric instabilities and controlling the most important internal plasma parameters. In particular the Edge Localized Modes (ELMs), the Neo-Classical Tearing Modes (NTM), the Resistive