The ALICE TPC readout control unit

Author

Gutiérrez, C. González ; Campagnolo, R. ; Junique, A. ; Musa, L. ; Alme, J. ; Lien, J. ; Pommersche, B. ; Richter, M. ; Roed, K. ; Röhrich, D. ; Ullaland, K. ; Alt, T.

Author_Institution

CERN, Geneva

Volume

1

fYear

2005

fDate

23-29 Oct. 2005

Firstpage

575

Lastpage

579

Abstract

The front end electronics for the ALICE time projection chamber (TPC) consists of about 560000 channels packed in 128-channel units (front end card). Every front end card (FEC) incorporates the circuits to amplify, shape, digitize, process and buffer the TPC pad signals. From the control and readout point of view the FECs are organized in 216 partitions, each being an independent system steered by one readout control unit (RCU). The RCU, which is physically part of the on-detector electronics, implements the interface to the data acquisition (DAQ), the trigger and timing circuit (TTC) and the detector control system (DCS). It broadcasts the trigger and clock information to the FECs, performs the initialization and readout via a high bandwidth bus, and implements monitoring and safety control functions via a dedicated I2C-like link. This paper addresses the architecture and the system performance of the RCU

Keywords

data acquisition; nuclear electronics; position sensitive particle detectors; proportional counters; readout electronics; time projection chambers; timing circuits; trigger circuits; ALICE time projection chamber readout control unit; I2C-like link; data acquisition; detector control system; front-end card; front-end electronics; high bandwidth bus; on-detector electronics; time projection chamber pad signals; trigger-and-timing circuit; Broadcasting; Circuits; Clocks; Control systems; Data acquisition; Detectors; Distributed control; Shape; Signal processing; Timing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, 2005 IEEE

Conference_Location

Fajardo

ISSN

1095-7863

Print_ISBN

0-7803-9221-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NSSMIC.2005.1596317

Filename

1596317