The ANTARES offshore data acquisition: a highly distributed, embedded and COTS-based system

Author

Anvar, Shebli ; Le Provost, Herve ; Louis, Frédéric

Author_Institution

CEA, Centre d´´Etudes Nucleaires de Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

Volume

2

fYear

2000

fDate

2000

Abstract

ANTARES is a neutrino telescope project based on strings of Cerenkov detectors in deep sea. Some 400 detectors are spread over a volume of 3000 000 m³ at 2000 m underwater, which calls for a highly distributed, embedded data acquisition system. Based on commodity off-the-shelf (COTS) low-power integrated processors and industry standards such as Ethernet and CORBA, the foreseen system is expected to run for 3 years without any direct access to the hardware. We present the system´s performance needs and constraints, and discuss the solutions that were imagined. We also make a case on the advantages and drawbacks of COTS electronics and software, and present recommendations on how to use COTS components efficiently in similar projects and HEP projects in general

Keywords

Cherenkov counters; astronomy computing; cosmic ray apparatus; data acquisition; ANTARES; COTS; Cerenkov detectors; commodity off-the-shelf; data acquisition; electronics; neutrino telescope; Application specific integrated circuits; Data acquisition; Detectors; Image reconstruction; Mesons; Network topology; Neutrino sources; Photomultipliers; Power cables; Telescopes;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, 2000 IEEE

Conference_Location

Lyon

ISSN

1082-3654

Print_ISBN

0-7803-6503-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NSSMIC.2000.949948

Filename

949948