Digital signal processing improvements of the SPIRAL2 beam position monitors at low intensity

The SPIRAL2 accelerator, designed for high intensity beams (up to 5 mA), needs to evolve for low intensities in order to reach the requirements of the S3 experimental room. This means increasing the operating range of diagnostic monitors including the Beam Position Monitors (BPM). Twenty BPM are installed in the warm sections of the linac to measure positions, ellipticities and phases. The digital processing of the BPM acquisition has been modified to operate at low intensity. This was done by improving the signal-to-noise ratio with an increase of the averaging resolution, an improvement of the channel equalisation system and with a deduction of parasitic signals induced by the surrounding equipment. The process was also modified to operate with chopper frequencies between 1 Hz and 1 kHz. A new BPM interface, with tables and graphical displays in order to control beam phases and energies in the linac, is now available. These new developments and measurement results in laboratory and with SPIRAL2 beams are presented, which show good results with a low intensity down to 1 µA.