EXPERIMENT CONTROL SYSTEM (ECS)

The complete Silicon Tracker detector (power supplies, front-end, DAQ, etc.) must be under the control of the Experiment Control System (ECS).

ECS is in charge of the configuration, control and monitoring of all the components of the online system. This includes all devices in the areas of: data acquisition, detector control (ex slow controls), trigger, timing and the interaction with the outside world.

The ECS will be a highly hierarchical and distributed system with a large set of local controllers based on Finite State Machines performing the control and monitoring of specific parts of the detector. The Silicon Tracker ECS must link to the global LHCb ECS implementig some interfaces which have already been defined.

CONTROL BOARD

This card provides the necessary functionalities to carry out several control and monitoring tasks, namely: the slow and fast control of the Silicon Tracker readout and digitizing electronics; control and monitor the LV power regulators; and the monitoring of the detector box temperatures and humidity.

As the structure of the Inner Tracker detector and the Trigger Tracker is very similar but with a different partitioning scheme, a common control board has been designed for both detectors. Next figure shows the basic layout of the ST electronics.

Another requirement that the Control Board (CB) has to meet is that the devices and components on it need to tolerate the radiation levels present in the cavern where the service boxes are located. For this reason some specific radiation hard devices developed at CERN are used. Several devices tested by our group and also other ones tested by other LHCb and CERN groups are used as well.

The following figures depict the functional block diagram of the CB, and also show a prototype CB and the blocks physical distribution on it: