Development and test of a mini-Data Acquisition system for the High-Luminosity LHC upgrade of the ATLAS Monitored Drift Tube detector

Abstract

New front-end electronics including ASICs and FPGA boards are under development for the ATLAS Monitored Drift Tube (MDT) detector to handle the large data rates and harsh environment expected in high luminosity LHC regime. A mobile Data Acquisition (miniDAQ) system is designed to perform integration tests of these front-end electronics. In addition, it will be used for surface commissioning of 96 small-radius MDT (sMDT) chambers and for integration and commissioning of new front-end electronics on the present ATLAS MDT chambers. Details of the miniDAQ hardware and firmware are described in this article. The system has been validated with cosmic muons using an sMDT prototype chamber and the new front-end electronics.