Radiation-Tolerant, SRAM-FPGA Based Trigger and Readout Electronics for the ALICE Experiment

The ALICE detector is a dedicated heavy-ion detector at the large hadron collider which is commissioned end of 2007 at CERN. The ALICE triggers are handled by the central trigger processor and distributed to all sub-detectors, amongst other the time projection chamber and the photon spectrometer. The front end electronics of the time projection chamber and the photon spectrometer share many of the same components. The photon spectrometer provides the trigger system with level 0 and level 1 triggers (e.g., high-P_t photons) by the use of several trigger router units and a trigger-OR board. The trigger electronics and the front end electronics are situated close to the collision-point, and errors due to radiation effects are to be expected. This article gives an overview of the trigger system from trigger generation with the photon spectrometer to trigger reception of the front end electronics of both detectors. How to deal with the possible effects of the radiation environment on the electronics that do trigger handling was evaluated.