Abstract :
The India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) will host a magnetised Iron-CALorimeter (ICAL) to study atmospheric neutrino oscillations with precise measurements of oscillations parameters. ICAL detector will deploy approximately 28,800 single gap Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) of 2m x 2m area as active detector elements. Each RPC has 64 X and 64 Y orthogonal pickup strips, which carry induced signals from the point of particle interaction. The signals after amplification are discriminated over a set threshold to generate digital pick-up signals. These digital signals are processed by an embedded RPC-DAQ module in each of the RPCs. The pre triggers from each of RPC-DAQ, participate in forming a global trigger. On a global trigger, DAQ records mainly the event time, RPC strip-hit information with relative time stamp. The strip signal rates in batches, are recorded periodically to monitor the health of RPC. The RPC-DAQ then packages this data and sends it over Ethernet to the back-end servers. For the purpose of communication and data transfer between the RPC-DAQ and the back-end, the former is configured as a network element with a unique IP number.
For the purpose of DAQ control and network interface, a soft core processor is used. NIOS II is the Soft core processor instantiated in the Altera FPGA of the RPC-DAQ. To create an Ethernet based communication between RPC-DAQ and Backend Server, it is interfaced with the Wiznet W5300 chip. The W5300 is a single chip having TCP/IP protocol and 10/100 Ethernet MAC & PHY. By configuring the Wiznet chip using NIOS we can create various protocols like UDP/TCP. A flash memory is interfaced with NIOS to store some network parameters of RPC-DAQ like IP, MAC, and Gateway address and to store FPGA configuration data. NIOS uses Serial Peripheral Interface to read data from the Temperature, Humidity & Pressure sensors through an ADC. A first version of this board has been developed. The board bringing up work had been outsourced, i.e. from board artwork upto board assembly. This board is currently being tested out at TIFR, and we are getting good results from it. This talk will give an introduction to the RPC-DAQ module along with its requirements and features, and also about the test results.
About Speaker :
Mandar has completed his Engineering from Shivaji University. He has worked at IIT Bombay as Project Assistant, Jr Research Fellow at TIFR and currently as Scientific Officer at TIFR
