The data acquisition system for the PANDA Micro-Vertex Detector

Abstract

The PANDA (antiProton ANnihilation at DArmstadt) experiment will study the strong interaction in annihilation reactions between an antiproton beam and a stationary cluster jet target. The PANDA detector will be composed of several sub-detectors designed for tracking, particle identification and calorimetry. The Micro-Vertex Detector (MVD) is the innermost part of the tracking system surrounding the interaction region, which is designed for precise vertex and tracking detection. It consists of silicon pixel and double-sided microstrip detectors. For the readout of the microstrip sensors an ASIC called ToASt (Torino Asic for Strip readout) is being developed in 0.11 μm CMOS technology at INFN Turin. The ASIC takes advantage of both Time-over-Threshold and Time-of-Arrival methods to accurately measure the event's energy and timestamp. To sustain the acquisition of the microstrip sensors a MDC (Module Data Concentrator) ASIC is under development at KIT. Up to eight ToASt front-ends' data streams are multiplexed, read out and processed by one MDC. The data of several MDCs are collected and processed by the off-detector readout card MMB (MVD Multiplexer Board), also under development at KIT. The processed data is then transferred via 100 GbE optical links to the computing nodes. The ToASt chips have been integrated with the FPGA implementation of the MDC to form the first fully functional detector module. Beam tests have been performed at the COSY facility in Jülich. This paper focuses on the design of MDC ASIC and MMB board, the integration with the ToASt and presents preliminary beam test results.