Level-1 RPC trigger in the CMS experiment—software for emulation and commissioning

Abstract

The CMS detector will start its operation in the end of 2007. Until that time great care must be taken in order to assure that hardware operation is fully understood. In this paper an example of how emulation software helps achieving this goal in the CMS Level-1 RPC Trigger system is presented. The design of the RPC trigger allows to insert sets of so-called test pulses at any stage of the hardware pipeline. Reading out data from different stages is also possible. Such design allows for easy debugging of the trigger hardware by comparing hardware and software emulation values, since the software and hardware algorithms are identical.