The Front-End Electronics for the Tracking System of the ALICE Muon Spectrometer

Abstract

A review of the two generations of front-end electronics for the muon spectrometer of the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider is presented. The basic elements of the front-end electronics are application-specific integrated circuits that are used in 1.1 × 10⁶ measuring channels and devices for communication with the data-acquisition system. The first generation of the electronics operates in the trigger mode and is characterized by an input throughput of 3 × 10³ events/s at an output data rate of 3.2 Gbit/s. The second generation is designed to operate under conditions of a high luminosity of the collider at input count rates of up to 10⁵ events/s. Signal processing is performed in the continuous readout mode. The communication devices with the data-acquisition system use application-specific chips that provide optical communication with a data transfer rate of 0.8 Tbit/s.