Study of PicoTDC Performance for FIT Detector Upgrade in ALICE Experiment at CERN

Abstract

In this paper, we present the results of a study on the performance of the PicoTDC. PicoTDC is a new Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) chip developed at CERN for time-of-flight measurements in high-energy physics experiments. Our research aimed to evaluate the feasibility of using the PicoTDC in the upgraded front-end electronics (FEE) of the Fast Interaction Trigger (FIT) detector in the ALICE experiment. The FIT detector provides the trigger signals for the other ALICE sub- detectors and operates under very tight latency constraints. Since the necessary PicoTDC performance data were not available in the published documentation, we decided to derive the required parameters from simulations. The unique contribution of this paper is a detailed explanation of the output signals’ timings of PicoTDC. Additionally, we propose a sensor channel allocation scheme that reduces the guaranteed PicoTDC processing time. We derive and present useful analytical formulas for calculating the output latency across different usage scenarios. Finally, we present a case study that assesses the feasibility and the conditions required to meet the latency and data-rate requirements when incorporating the PicoTDC into the upgraded FIT front-end electronics.