A Time Stamping TDC for SPEC and ZEN Platforms Based on White Rabbit
Sub-nsec precision time synchronization is requested for data-acquisition components distributed over up to tens of km2 in modern astroparticle experiments, like upcoming Gamma-Ray and Cosmic-Ray detector arrays, to ensure optimal triggering, pattern recognition and background rejection. The White-R...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Conference Object |
| Language: | English |
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JACoW, Geneva, Switzerland
2018
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| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.18429/jacow-icalepcs2017-thpha088 http://jacow.org/icalepcs2017/doi/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THPHA088.html |
| Summary: | Sub-nsec precision time synchronization is requested for data-acquisition components distributed over up to tens of km2 in modern astroparticle experiments, like upcoming Gamma-Ray and Cosmic-Ray detector arrays, to ensure optimal triggering, pattern recognition and background rejection. The White-Rabbit (WR) standard for precision time and frequency transfer is well suited for this purpose. We present two multi-channel general-purpose TDC units, which are firmware-implemented on two widely used WR-nodes: the SPEC (Spartan 6) and ZEN (Zynq) boards. Their main features: TDCs with 1 nsec resolution (default), running deadtime-free and capable of local buffering and centralized level-2 trigger architectures. The TDC stamps pulses are in absolute TAI. With off-the-shelve mezzanine boards (5ChDIO-FMC-boards), up to 5 TDC channels are available per WR-node. Higher density, customized simple I/O boards allow to turn this into 8 to 32-channel units, with an excellent price to performance ratio. The TDC units have shown excellent long-term performance in a harsh environment application at TAIGA-HiSCORE/Siberia, for the Front-End DAQ and the central GPSDO clock facility. : Proceedings of the 16th Int. Conf. on Accelerator and Large Experimental Control Systems, ICALEPCS2017, Barcelona, Spain |
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