Archive of October 2015

CbmTOF TDC board

The CBM-TOF board - a 32 channel TDC with optical link, high-quality clock input, low-noise power supply for best TDC performance. The board is fully compatible to TRB3 (it contains a full TrbNet endpoint).

Tip of the Week: Input Monitoring

Most designs feature input monitors. The basic functionality is an edge counter monitoring each input channel individually - if read out e.g. once per second one can easily display the rate of input pulses. Besides that there is a high-resolution mode available: One input channel can be selected and the counter be sampled with a given period, down to 100 ns per sample. A buffer stores up to 1000 samples that can be read out subsequently for detailed rate analysis, for example to check micro-structures of the spill or to see if hits close to each other deteriorate the detector performance.

Tip of the Week: Trigger on any input

Most TRB3 designs contain the feature to forward signals from any input to the CTS to be used for triggering. That is, any input to a TDC design or the data from ADC-AddOn crossing a configurable threshold can be selected to be forwarded to the CTS. The signal is sent on-board the TRB3 or using RJ-45 cables between boards. For convenient use, a coincidence between two groups of signals can be generated as well.

Using this features gives various options to trigger on input signals - without the need to install a dedicated signal cable to the CTS.