Real-Time Data Processing Pipeline for Trigger Readout Board-Based Data Acquisition Systems

• Published in: IEEE transactions on nuclear science Vol. 69; no. 7; pp. 1765 - 1772
• Main Authors: Malige, A., Korcyl, G., Firlej, M., Fiutowski, T., Idzik, M., Korzeniak, B., Lalik, R., Misiak, A., Molenda, A., Moron, J., Rathod, N., Salabura, P., Smyrski, J., Swientek, K., Wintz, P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.07.2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Anodes; Antiparticles; Antiprotons; Data acquisition; Data acquisition systems (DAQs); Data processing; Detectors; Feature extraction; Firmware; Hardware; Pipelines; Read out systems; Real time; real-time data processing; Real-time systems; Subsystems; tracking detectors
• ISSN: 0018-9499; 1558-1578
• DOI: 10.1109/TNS.2022.3186157

Large-scale physics experiments running at high interaction rates place a high demand on the data acquisition system (DAQ) responsible for transporting the data from the detector to the storage. The antiProton ANihilation at DArmstadt (PANDA) at the facility for anti-proton and ion research (FAIR) is one such experiment of the future that will not use fixed hardware triggers; instead, the event selection is based on real-time feature extraction, filtering, and high-level correlations. A firmware framework for such real-time data processing has been developed and tested with hardware setup for a PANDA Forward Tracker (FT) prototype. The solution is applicable for other detector subsystems based on the so-called Trigger Readout Board (TRB) data read-out system.