130
5 Conclusion and Outlook
would be beneficial to implement the Ethernet communication directly in firmware,
instead of relying on the Linux system to handle this.
The evaluation board used for the DAQ system, the Altera SocKit [13], is out of
production, and is replaced by a similar board, the Altera DE10 [14]. The new board
does not support high-speed transceivers on the connector connecting to the SAMPA
test board. As such, the SFP transceivers on the test board cannot be used with this
evaluation board. An effort to port the SocKit design to the DE10 is nearly complete,
but requires some final debugging.
The current fixed shaping and gain settings were specifically chosen for the needs
of the TPC and MCH, but they might not be suitable for other detectors that wish to utilize the SAMPA. Therefore, an alteration to the design, implementing programmable
gain and shaping settings, could be done to make the device more general. As this
adds more circuitry to the sensitive analogue section, it comes at the cost of increased
noise.
To improve manufacturing tests and calibration, a method for automatically injecting a known charge into the front-end channels would be of interest. A switching
network could be used to connect one or more capacitors with known charge onto
each channel. A digital to analogue converter was designed for this purpose, but it
was not implemented due to the risks that it would increasing the noise.
Throughout Chap. 3 and in Sect. 4.1.4 there are discussions on some additional
solutions and improvements in the digital design that might prove useful to include
if a new device is designed, depending on the needs of the detectors involved. As
the digital design was produced with enough flexibility so that it could be used for
a wide variety of detector applications, it compromises on device complexity and
power consumption. If this is of concern for a detector application, the design is built
with enough modularity so that removing unneeded blocks in a new design can be
done without too much effort.
References
1. A. Kluge et al. (2018) TPC FEC PRR. [Online]. Available: https://indico.cern.ch/event/
721919/.
2. A. Kluge et al. (2018) MCH Dual Sampa PRR. [Online]. Available: https://indico.cern.ch/
event/728720/.
3. A. Baldisseri, “MCH 2018 SPS testbeam,” MCH Upgrade Weekly Meeting, 2018. [Online].
Available: https://indico.cern.ch/event/762022/contributions/3162180/attachments/1726348/
2788778/MCH-Sept-SPS2018Testbeam-Oct218.pdf.
4. H. Schulte, “Test beam may 2018: Pedestals, noise and pulser analysis,” TPC upgrade collaboration meeting, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://indico.cern.ch/event/653116/contributions/
2701891/attachments/1513895/2362265/Testbeam_may_2017_-_pedestals_and_noise.pdf.
5. A. Kluge et al. (2017) Sampa engineering design review. [Online]. Available: https://indico.
cern.ch/event/617831/.
6. A. Kluge et al. (2018) Sampa PRR. [Online]. Available: https://indico.cern.ch/event/700894/.
7. A. Danial. (2017) Count lines of code. [Online]. Available: https://github.com/stsnel/cloc.
5 Conclusion and Outlook
would be beneficial to implement the Ethernet communication directly in firmware,
instead of relying on the Linux system to handle this.
The evaluation board used for the DAQ system, the Altera SocKit [13], is out of
production, and is replaced by a similar board, the Altera DE10 [14]. The new board
does not support high-speed transceivers on the connector connecting to the SAMPA
test board. As such, the SFP transceivers on the test board cannot be used with this
evaluation board. An effort to port the SocKit design to the DE10 is nearly complete,
but requires some final debugging.
The current fixed shaping and gain settings were specifically chosen for the needs
of the TPC and MCH, but they might not be suitable for other detectors that wish to utilize the SAMPA. Therefore, an alteration to the design, implementing programmable
gain and shaping settings, could be done to make the device more general. As this
adds more circuitry to the sensitive analogue section, it comes at the cost of increased
noise.
To improve manufacturing tests and calibration, a method for automatically injecting a known charge into the front-end channels would be of interest. A switching
network could be used to connect one or more capacitors with known charge onto
each channel. A digital to analogue converter was designed for this purpose, but it
was not implemented due to the risks that it would increasing the noise.
Throughout Chap. 3 and in Sect. 4.1.4 there are discussions on some additional
solutions and improvements in the digital design that might prove useful to include
if a new device is designed, depending on the needs of the detectors involved. As
the digital design was produced with enough flexibility so that it could be used for
a wide variety of detector applications, it compromises on device complexity and
power consumption. If this is of concern for a detector application, the design is built
with enough modularity so that removing unneeded blocks in a new design can be
done without too much effort.
References
1. A. Kluge et al. (2018) TPC FEC PRR. [Online]. Available: https://indico.cern.ch/event/
721919/.
2. A. Kluge et al. (2018) MCH Dual Sampa PRR. [Online]. Available: https://indico.cern.ch/
event/728720/.
3. A. Baldisseri, “MCH 2018 SPS testbeam,” MCH Upgrade Weekly Meeting, 2018. [Online].
Available: https://indico.cern.ch/event/762022/contributions/3162180/attachments/1726348/
2788778/MCH-Sept-SPS2018Testbeam-Oct218.pdf.
4. H. Schulte, “Test beam may 2018: Pedestals, noise and pulser analysis,” TPC upgrade collaboration meeting, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://indico.cern.ch/event/653116/contributions/
2701891/attachments/1513895/2362265/Testbeam_may_2017_-_pedestals_and_noise.pdf.
5. A. Kluge et al. (2017) Sampa engineering design review. [Online]. Available: https://indico.
cern.ch/event/617831/.
6. A. Kluge et al. (2018) Sampa PRR. [Online]. Available: https://indico.cern.ch/event/700894/.
7. A. Danial. (2017) Count lines of code. [Online]. Available: https://github.com/stsnel/cloc.