MAPS application for the ITS upgrade

The Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor (MAPS) technology is of central interest for the innermost tracking layers of particle physics experiments since they enhance the detector granularity and thus allow for very high spatial resolution with low material budget. This contribution will focus on the MAPS implementation for the ALICE ITS Upgrade. Within the ongoing R&D; program, the ALPIDE chip is under development with a wide pixel matrix consisting of 512 rows and 1024 columns. With this high pixel granularity a fast read out is mandatory. For this purpose a high speed serial link, which works at the targeting speeds of 1.2Gbps/400 Mbps, is integrated in the chip in order to send out data at the far end of a differential cable. To overcome the physical limitations imposed by the signal lines and properly reconstruct the signal, pre-emphasis technique is mandatory at such long distances. This contribution summarizes the ongoing studies on the data transmission quality and presents the first measurement of the first produced prototype