A new data transfer scheme for the HL-LHC upgrade of the ATLAS Tile Hadronic Calorimeter

Abstract

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is undergoing a series of upgrades towards a High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) that will deliver five times the LHC nominal instantaneous luminosity. The ATLAS experiment is one of the experiments at the LHC that investigates elementary particle interactions in collisions of high-energy proton beams. To prepare for data taking in high-luminosity conditions, the ATLAS Tile Hadronic Calorimeter (TileCal) will replace completely on- and off-detector electronics using a new read-out architecture. The TileCal detector signals will be digitized by on-detector electronics and transferred to the TileCal PreProcessors (TilePPr), which comprise the main component of the off-detector electronics. In the TilePPr, the digitized data will be stored in pipeline buffers and be packed and read out to the Front-End LInk eXchange (FELIX) system upon the reception of a trigger decision. FELIX is a new detector readout component being developed as part of the ATLAS upgrade effort. FELIX is designed to act as a data router between the data acquisition detector control and TTC (Timing, Trigger and Control) systems and the new or updated trigger and detector front-end electronics. Whereas previous detector readout implementations relied on diverse custom hardware platforms, the idea behind FELIX is to unify all readout across one well supported and flexible platform.