Test station for the LHCb muon front-end boards (November 2005)

The INFN LHCb group in Rome has developed and implemented hardware and software of a fixture to test LHCb muon front-end (FE) circuitry for MWPC and GEM chambers. Front-end boards are made up of two amplifying, shaping and discriminating (ASD) ASICs and a read-out and control ASIC, all of which accessible via an I2C based data transfer protocol. The resulting testing station allows bench tests of front-end readout circuitry using the same facilities which will be available for their supervision, as well as a 16-channel charge injector, a custom read-out board, and a Win API C++ program (to control and analyze data) developed especially for this purpose. The outcome is a user friendly system which will be widely utilized in the course of chambers and readout electronics tests, and during the installation phase of the experiment. The main relevant aspects of quality assurance are: data transfer, board connectivity, sensitivity, offset and noise. A time to digital converting component has also been implemented in order to evaluate the output signals timing response of the device under test (DUT). A brief summary of preliminary results obtained during its development and implementation is also featured