TY  - JOUR
AU  - Sanchez-Garrido, Jorge
AU  - Jurado, Antonio
AU  - Jimenez-Lopez, Miguel
AU  - Balzer, Arnim
AU  - Prokoph, Heike
AU  - Stephan, Maurice
AU  - Berge, David
AU  - Rodriguez-Alvarez, Manuel
AU  - Diaz, Javier
TI  - A White Rabbit-Synchronized Accurate Time-Stamping Solution for the Small-Sized Cameras of the Cherenkov Telescope Array
JO  - IEEE transactions on instrumentation and measurement
VL  - 70
SN  - 1557-9662
CY  - New York, NY
PB  - IEEE
M1  - PUBDB-2020-04643
SP  - 2000314
PY  - 2021
N1  - Waiting for fulltext
AB  - This article presents the Zynq-embedded node for the Cherenkov telescope array (ZEN-CTA) node, a programmable system-on-chip (SoC) with White Rabbit (WR)-synchronization capability. It targets a solution for the uniform clock and trigger time-stamping module of the small-sized telescopes in the CTA. This module is tasked as a distributed acquisition device with a focus on obtaining time stamps for candidate Cherenkov events, which could be generated at potentially high rates from very-high-energy gamma rays and their subsequent distribution over Ethernet. In this context, the customized design of the ZEN-CTA node is examined thoroughly, including its generic implementation aspects and its main functional blocks. The design of the WR-assisted time-to-digital converters (TDCs) for time-stamping analog triggers is presented in detail alongside the implementation of an upgraded high-speed data path (1 Gb/s) for the WR-compatible Ethernet interfaces of the node. The new data path will feature a direct memory access engine for direct software transmissions and a hardware description language (HDL) coprocessor for high-speed forwarding. Next, the time-stamping accuracy of the WR-enhanced TDCs will be characterized alongside the forwarding efficiency of the new data path. Finally, conclusions are drawn, and the main contributions of this research are enumerated, a potential deployment within the CTA infrastructure to support the acquisition of Cherenkov light is considered, and additional use cases are mentioned.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000594910700025
DO  - DOI:10.1109/TIM.2020.3013343
UR  - https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/452393
ER  -