The integration of FPGA TDC inside White Rabbit node

作者：Li, H.; Xue, T.; Gong, G.^*; Li, J.

来源：Journal of Instrumentation, 2017, 12(04): P04020.

DOI：10.1088/1748-0221/12/04/P04020

• Detector control systems (detector and experiment monitoring and slow-control systems, architecture, hardware, algorithms, databases)
• Trigger concepts and systems (hardware and software)
• Data acquisition concepts

White Rabbit technology is capable of delivering sub-nanosecond accuracy and picosecond precision of synchronization and normal data packets over the fiber network. Carry chain structure in FPGA is a popular way to build TDC and tens of picosecond RMS resolution has been achieved. The integration of WR technology with FPGA TDC can enhance and simplify the TDC in many aspects that includes providing a low jitter clock for TDC, a synchronized absolute UTC/TAI timestamp for coarse counter, a fancy way to calibrate the carry chain DNL and an easy to use Ethernet link for data and control information transmit. This paper presents a FPGA TDC implemented inside a normal White Rabbit node with sub-nanosecond measurement precision. The measured standard deviation reaches 50ps between two distributed TDCs. Possible applications of this distributed TDC are also discussed.

• 出版日期2017-4
• 单位清华大学