Slow control for the ANTARES underwater neutrino detector: present and future

The ANTARES project aims to install a 0.1 km² deep sea Cherenkov observatory for high-energy cosmic neutrino detection and long term deep-sea environmental studies. The feasibility of a kilometre scale detector is under study. In this paper we describe the slow control architecture developed for the demonstrator prototype based on the WorldFip fieldbus, and discuss different architectures scalable to a larger detector. WorldFip, a high rate and deterministic fieldbus network, is used to achieve all communications between sensors, control modules and the Slow Control data acquisition system. It is well adapted to make the whole Slow Control system work in severe environmental constraints