Design and hardware evaluation of the optical-link system for the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter Phase-II Upgrade

TL;DR

This paper presents the design and evaluation of an optical link system for the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter upgrade, enabling high-speed data transmission and control signals over long distances using specialized transceivers.

Contribution

It introduces a novel optical link system based on lpGBTs and VTRx+ modules, tailored for the ATLAS upgrade, with detailed design and functional evaluation.

Findings

Successful design implementation of the optical link system.

Evaluation confirms the system's major functions meet requirements.

Demonstrated reliable data and control signal transmission over 150 meters.

Abstract

An optical link system is being developed for the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter Phase-II upgrade. The optical link system is responsible for transmit the data of over 182 thousand detector channels from 1524 Front-End Boards (FEBs) through 26 optical fibers per FEB over 150 meters to the counting room and brings clocks, bunch crossing reset signals and slow control/monitoring signals back to the FEBs. The optical link system is based on the Low-Power GigaBit Transceivers (lpGBTs) and the Versatile optical Transceiver (VTRx+) modules, which both are being developed for the High-Luminosity LHC upgrade. An evaluation board is designed and the major functions of the optical link system are being evaluated. The design of the optical link system and the evaluation of major functions are presented in the paper.