학술논문

Global Trigger and Readout System for the AGATA Experiment
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on. 55(1):91-98 Feb, 2008
Subject
Nuclear Engineering
Bioengineering
Optical pulse shaping
Optical buffering
Pipelines
Buffer storage
Timing
Sensor arrays
Gamma ray detection
Gamma ray detectors
Spectroscopy
Shape
AdvancedTCA
digital trigger
distributed synchronization
full mesh readout
Pci-Express
Language
ISSN
0018-9499
1558-1578
Abstract
AGATA is a 4-pi array of high purity Ge detectors for in-beam gamma-ray spectroscopy based on the novel concepts of pulse shape analysis (PSA) and gamma-ray tracking. Tracking and PSA require the concurrent digitization—at a sampling rate of 100 Msamples/s—of preamplifier signals of the 36-fold segmented Ge crystals composing the array. Locally digitized data are optically transferred to remote pre-processing nodes for pulse energy computation. The design of the front-end readout and level-1 (L1) trigger in AGATA follows a synchronous pipeline model: the detector data are stored in pipeline buffers at the global AGATA frequency, waiting the global L1 decision. A global timing system provides a reference clock and time tag to the digitizers and the pre-processing units by means of a tree of optically connected timing units. Pre-processing nodes are integrated in AdvancedTCA-based carrier cards with full mesh connectivity in the backplane and read-out through pci-express based optical links. The front-end data readout and its integration in the global trigger and synchronization system will be described.