A Data Acquisition Board Firmware for Pellet Tracking System

Abstract: The PANDA experiment requires precise information about the target position in the beam [3]. The target in form of frozen hydrogen 30um droplets called “pellets” moving at a speed of 60m/s is tracked by a system consisting of 8 line scan CCD cameras sending data to “Camera Link Boards”, where the data are merged and sent further to a data acquisition system for storage and subsequent analysis [15]. The aim of the thesis is to replace the current bulky Data Acquisition system with just one board ZYNQ Board constructed by P. Stamatakopoulos, G. Ntounas and P. Marciniewski [16] . In this thesis, the firmware is implemented in the ZYNQ Board having a Xilinx ZYNQ XC7Z030-1FBG484C. The ZYNQ Board receives data delivered by Camera Link Boards over four optical links running at 2Gb/s. The Data Acquisition system serves for data merging and retransmission over 1 Gb/s Ethernet. For implementing of the Data Acquisition system, the following three steps are followed. In the first step a custom IP is designed in Xilinx Vivado, which is responsible for receiving data from camera link boards, merging the data and storing them in data buffers. The IP also sends push-back signals to camera link boards for stopping the data flow. In the second step DAQ firmware is designed in block diagram using Xilinx Vivado IP Integrator. The purpose of DAQ firmware block design is to send the buffered data to ARM based Processing System (PS) of the ZYNQ via AXI-4 bus. In last step Linux Operating System is installed on the ARM processor for receiving data in ARM processor and sending data to a PC through Ethernet. The Firmware was tested first in the laboratory using an Integrated Logic Analyzer of Xilinx Vivado and then in the real environment of the The Svedberg Laboratory in Uppsala.