20/10/2008 A. Alici - ALICE TOF Festival 1

Electronics and data acquisition of the ALICE

TOF detector

A. Alici

University and INFN, Bologna

20/10/2008 A. Alici - ALICE TOF Festival 2

Electronics

MRPC

VME Crates RO electronics)

Twisted pair flat cables

Amphenol skewclear cables

20/10/2008 A. Alici - ALICE TOF Festival 3

From MRPC From MRPC

VHDCI connector for signal cables to TOF crates

NINO ASIC chips

Front end card

NINO ASIC chip:

• fast amplifier and discriminator

• very low power consuption

• 15 ps time resolution

20/10/2008 A. Alici - ALICE TOF Festival 4

Crates with readout electronics

DRM Data Readout Module: 1 per crate

LTM Local Trigger Module: 1 per crate

CPDM Clock and Pulser Distributor Module: 1 every 2 crates

TRM TDC Readout Module: 9 or 10 per crate

MRPC

FE cards

VME Crates (RO electronics)

FEA LV monitorFEA threshold set and monitorFEAC temperature monitorFEA OR signals to CTTM

LHC clock distributionPulser to MRPC

20/10/2008 A. Alici - ALICE TOF Festival 5

TDC Readout Module

piggy-back card (3 HPTDC chips)

Each TRM boards houses 30 HPTDC ASIC and 10 temperature sensors on 10 piggy back boards.

• multi-hit and multi events capability

• 240 channel with 25 ps resolution

20/10/2008 A. Alici - ALICE TOF Festival 6

Data Readout Module (DRM)

The DRM provides the VME Master duties in the crate (data readout from TRM boards) and performs other functions, such as:

• data transmission and communication with the ALICE DAQ system through Data Detector Link (DDL)

• reception and computing of trigger signals through Timing Trigger Control receiver (TTCrx)

• VME bus access through a slow control optical link

• remote programming of FPGA on VME boards in the crate

20/10/2008 A. Alici - ALICE TOF Festival 7

Electronics QA tests

Pulser test of SM searching for “dead” and noisy channels: total amount less than 0.5% over the whole TOF (157248 channels)

20/10/2008 A. Alici - ALICE TOF Festival 8

TOF triggerThe MRPC detector provides very fast signals with relatively low noise TOF can be used as L0 trigger.

Several trigger topology selected during cosmics run. The TOF based trigger is a very usefull tool for TOF and other detector commissioning.

TOFforTRDBACKtoBACK

20/10/2008 A. Alici - ALICE TOF Festival 9

TOF trigger

TRD simulated charge spectrum TRD real spectrum without TOF pretrigger

With TOF pretrigger

x100 (ns)

x100 (ns)

20/10/2008 A. Alici - ALICE TOF Festival 10

HMPID triggered by TOF

Without TOF trigger

With TOF trigger

TOFforHMPID

charge (ADC)

20/10/2008 A. Alici - ALICE TOF Festival 11

TOF DCSTOF Finite State Machine based DCS completed and working

• HV, LV monitor and settings

• FE and RO electronics temperature monitor

• Cooling and gas service monitor and settings

• automatic procedures

• alarm handling

20/10/2008 A. Alici - ALICE TOF Festival 12

TOF DCSVME boards temperatures

TOF SM panel