Design of data transmission for a portable DAQ system

Abstract

Field Programmable Gate Array(FPGA),combined with ARM(Advanced RISC Machines) is increasingly employed in the portable data acquisition(DAQ) system for nuclear experiments to reduce the system volume and achieve powerful and multifunctional capacity.High-speed data transmission between FPGA and ARM is one of the most challenging issues for system implementation.In this paper,we propose a method to realize the high-speed data transmission by using the FPGA to acquire massive data from FEE(Front-end electronics) and send it to the ARM whilst the ARM to transmit the data to the remote computer through the TCP/IP protocol for later process.This paper mainly introduces the interface design of the high-speed transmission method between the FPGA and the ARM,the transmission logic of the FPGA,and the program design of the ARM.The theoretical research shows that the maximal transmission speed between the FPGA and the ARM through this way can reach 50 MB/s.In a realistic nuclear physics experiment,this portable DAQ system achieved 2.2 MB/s data acquisition speed.