FPGA-based, specialized trigger and data acquisition systems for high-energy physics experiments

Abstract

High-energy physics (HEP) experiments with particle colliders enable us to study the structure of matter, its properties and interactions. The work in this field stimulates the development of measurement methods and new technological solutions. An increase in the metrological accuracy (in terms of space, time or signal recognition), as well as in the speed of data processing and registration, is observed. The growing functional requirements in triggering and data acquisition lead to a widespread application of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) with hardware description language (HDL) programming. The review discusses multi-channel, distributed, synchronous measurement systems for triggering and data acquisition used in HEP experiments. These systems are now mainly based on FPGA solutions. The conditions, requirements and confinements of FPGAs in HEP measurement systems are presented.