Readout Driver Firmware Development for the ATLAS Insertable B-Layer

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2014During the Large Hadron Collider shutdown from 2013 to 2014 a fourth silicon layer, called the Insertable-B Layer (IBL), was inserted inside the existing ATLAS Pixel Detector. The IBL uses the state-of-the-art FE-I4 front-end readout ASICs for enhanced detector readout efficiency during upcoming LHC runs at higher energy and luminosity. The control and data acquisition (DAQ) of the IBL requires the commissioning of new off-detector readout electronics, mainly consisting of Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based Readout Driver (ROD) and Back-of-Crate (BOC) Cards. This thesis focuses on the architecture, implementation, simulation, and hardware test results of the new IBL ROD datapath firmware. Characterization of the IBL detector front-end and an overview of ATLAS Trigger DAQ (TDAQ) system are provided in the first chapters of the thesis. IBL ROD datapath firmware was designed and simulated in a ModelSim testbench with a realistic HDL FE-I4 model as source of data. The hardware tests using both real and emulated inputs have been performed for data taking. As this is an on-going development effort for the IBL collaboration, the outlook and near-term development goals for IBL ROD firmware are specified in this report