Test of the CMS microstrip silicon tracker readout and control system

The Microstrip Silicon tracker of the CMS detector is designed to provide robust particle tracking and vertex reconstruction within a strong magnetic field in the high luminosity environment of the LHC. The Tracker readout system employs Front-End Driver cards to digitize and buffer the analogue data arriving via optical links from on detector pipeline chips. The control chain of the front-end electronic is built to operate via optical fibers in order to shield the communications from the outside noise. Components close to the final design have been assembled to be tested in the X5 beam area at CERN where a dedicated 25 ns temporal structure beam has been made available by the SPS. This paper describes the hardware and the software developed for readout and control of data acquired by the front-end electronics operating at 40 MHz, Some preliminary results of the tests performed in the 25 ns beam are also given. (8 refs)