A Unified DAQ Interconnection Network With Precise Time Synchronization

This paper focuses on the interconnection network used as a part of the Data Acquisition System of the Compressed Baryonic Matter experiment at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany. This experiment will have special demands on the Data Acquisition System like limited space for hardware, radiation tolerance, flexibility for different types of network traffic and support for synchronization mechanisms. The specialty of the CBM network is that it uses only a single bidirectional fiber link for all network abilities and providing a deterministic latency message for precise time synchronisation. This led to the development of a new network and protocol.