Complete design of maximally-automated self-driven control mechanism for a large scale electronics system and its application to the ATLAS Phase-II TGC system

Abstract

Establishing a reliable and efficient method to control electronics system consisting of many circuit boards is critical in the system design. Among unique requirements for the control in high energy physics experiments, we propose a maximally-automated and self-driven scheme for a system that exploits FPGAs, flash memory devices, and high-speed optical links. We have demonstrated our ideas in the ATLAS Phase-II Thin Gap Chamber system as the prototype for this new automated scheme. The method is widely applicable and knowledge and experience can be shared with other experiments using an FPGA-based large-scale electronics system.