The ngdp framework is intended to provide a base for the data acquisition (DAQ) system software. The ngdp's design key features are: high modularity and scalability; usage of the kernel context (particularly kernel threads) of the operating systems (OS), which allows to avoid preemptive scheduling and unnecessary memory--to--memory copying between contexts; elimination of intermediate data storages on the media slower than the operating memory like hard disks, etc. The ngdp, having the above properties, is suitable to organize and manage data transportation and processing for needs of essentially distributed DAQ systems. The investigation has been performed at the Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Energy Physics, JINR.
EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) Technical Diagnostic System (TDS) is used to monitor the outlet temperature of all superconducting coils, in case of temperature anomaly, it will trigger safety interlock system to meet EAST device safety. The data acquisition system of TDS is in charge of continuous data acquisition of the nitrogen and helium temperature signals, TDS security alarm and long-term data storage. It supports continuous data acquisition and pulse data acquisition. The data acquisition of the nitrogen temperature signals is based on the PXI technology while obtai…
We have assembled a small-scale streaming data acquisition system based on the SAMPA front-end ASIC. We report on measurements performed on the SAMPA chip and preliminary cosmic ray data acquired from a Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) detector read out using the SAMPA.
Emerging high-performance storage technologies are opening up the possibility of designing new distributed data acquisition system architectures, in which the live acquisition of data and their processing are decoupled through a storage element. An example of these technologies is 3DXPoint, which promises to fill the gap between memory and traditional storage and offers unprecedented high throughput for data persistency. In this paper, we characterize the performance of persistent memory devices, which use the 3DXPoint technology, in the context of the data acquisition system for one large Par…
Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) have recently become a valuable computing tool for the acquisition of data at high rates and for a relatively low cost. The devices work by parallelizing the code into thousands of threads, each executing a simple process, such as identifying pulses from a waveform digitizer. The CUDA programming library can be used to effectively write code to parallelize such tasks on Nvidia GPUs, providing a significant upgrade in performance over CPU based acquisition systems. The muon $g$-$2$ experiment at Fermilab is heavily relying on GPUs to process its data. The data …
The Gamma Ray Energy Tracking Array (GRETA) is a 4-π detector system, currently under development, capable of determining energy, timing and tracking of multiple gamma-ray interactions inside germanium crystals as demonstrated in the Gamma Ray Energy Tracking In-Beam Array (GRETINA). Charge sensitive amplifiers instrument the crystals and their outputs are converted using analog to digital converters for real-time digital processing. In this paper, we will present the design of the detector system and data acquisition. We will describe the real time components of the digital signal-processing …
This paper presents an RDMA over Ethernet protocol used for data acquisition systems, currently under development at the ESRF. The protocol is implemented on Xilinx Ultrascale + FPGAs thanks to the 100G hard MAC IP. The proposed protocol is fairly compared with the well-known RoCE-V2 protocol using a commercial network adapter from Mellanox. Obtained results show the superiority of the proposed algorithm over RoCE-V2 in terms of data throughput. Performance tests on the 100G link show that it can reach a maximum stable link performance of 90 Gbps with minimum packets sizes greater than 1KB and…
Gamma-Ray Infrastructure For Fundamental Investigations of Nuclei, GRIFFIN, is a new experimental facility for radioactive decay studies at the TRIUMF-ISAC laboratory. This article describes the details of the custom designed GRIFFIN digital data acquisition system. The features of the system that will enable high-precision half-life and branching ratio measurements with levels of uncertainty better than 0.05% are described. The system has demonstrated the ability to effectively collect signals from High-purity germanium crystals at counting rates up to 50kHz while maintaining good energy reso…
During the last couple of decades, the use of arrays of bolometers has represented one of the leading techniques for the search for rare events. CUORE, an array of 988 TeO$_2$ bolometers that is taking data since April 2017 at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (Italy), exploits the large mass, low background, good energy resolution and low energy threshold of these detectors successfully. Thanks to these characteristics, they could be also sensitive to other low energy rare processes, such as galactic dark matter interactions. In this paper we describe the data acquisition system that wa…
This paper presents the design criteria and the current implementation of a generic and functionally rich data acquisition framework for high performance detectors called RASHPA. The framework is based on the use of RDMA mechanisms for optimized data transfer and supports multiple destinations and simultaneous transfer operations through multiple parallel data links. Although RASHPA is somehow agnostic in what respects to the type of detector and can deal with different types of data and metadata, it implements selection and dispatching rules that are optimized for the efficient manipulation a…
In this paper, a cost-effective prototype data acquisition system specifically designed for Schumann resonance measurements and an adequate signal processing method are described in detail. The implemented system captures the magnetic component of the Schumann resonance signal, using a magnetic antenna, at much higher sampling rates than the Nyquist rate for efficient signal improvement. In order to obtain the characteristics of the individual resonances of the SR spectrum a new and efficient software was developed. The processing techniques used in this software are analyzed thoroughly in the…
New front-end electronics including ASICs and FPGA boards are under development for the ATLAS Monitored Drift Tube (MDT) detector to handle the large data rates and harsh environment expected at high-luminosity LHC runs. A mobile Data Acquisition (miniDAQ) system is designed to perform integration tests of these front-end electronics. In addition, it will be used for surface commissioning of 96 small-radius MDT (sMDT) chambers and for integration and commissioning of new front-end electronics on the present ATLAS MDT chambers. Details of the miniDAQ hardware and firmware are described in this …
The ANAIS project has been a long time effort devoted to carry out an experiment to detect dark matter annual modulation with very low background NaI(Tl) detectors. It is expected to be fully commissioned along 2016. This experiment could confirm the DAMA/LIBRA positive signal with the same target and technique. This work was devoted to the design, implementation and characterization of a data acquisition system suitable for the ANAIS experiment, having in mind the ANAIS requirements: very low energy threshold, a background as low as possible in the region of interest, a high enough exposure a…
The WaveDAQ is a newly-designed digitization Trigger and Data AcQuisition system (TDAQ) allowing Multi-gigasample waveform recording on a large amount of channels (up to 16384) by using the DRS4 analog switched capacitor array as downconverting ASIC. A high bandwidth, programmable input stage has been coupled with a bias generator to allow SiPM operation without need of any other external apparatus. The trigger generation is tightly coupled within the system to limit the required depth of the analog memory, allowing faster digitization speeds. This system has been designed for the MEG experime…
The data acquisition console is an important component of the EAST data acquisition system which provides unified data acquisition and long-term data storage for diagnostics. The data acquisition console is used to manage the data acquisition configuration information and control the data acquisition workflow. The data acquisition console has been developed many years, and with increasing of data acquisition nodes and emergence of new control nodes, the function of configuration management has become inadequate. It is going to update the configuration management function of data acquisition co…
A new data acquisition system for the high resolution magnetic spectrometer Lintott at the superconducting Darmstadt electron linear accelerator S-DALINAC was developed. It allows inclusive and coincidence electron scattering experiments with event rates up to 10 kHz.
The data acquisition system is based on ROOT and waveform digital technology, including neutron detector, waveform digitizer, PCI card, optical fiber, computer, reaction target device, stepper motor, data acquisition software and control target software. It achieves to acquire and record the waveform information of signal measured by the detector using a waveform digitizer. The specific target position is changed by the stepper motor which is remotely controlled by the data acquisition software and control target software. It is implemented by the exchange of information between the data acqui…
A MIDAS-based Data Acquisition System for Gaseous Detectors
INPAC and School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学物理与天文学院）；Shanghai Jiao Tong University Sichuan Research Institute（上海交通大学四川研究院）；SPEIT (SJTU-Paris Elite Institute of Technology), Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学巴黎精英高等研究院）；School of Physics, Sun Yat-Sen University（中山大学物理学院）
Demands on Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) data transport have been increasing over the years as frame sizes and refresh rates increase. As the bandwidths requirements increase the ability to implement data transport protocol layers using "soft" programmable logic becomes harder and start to require harden IP blocks implementation. To reduce the number of physical links and interconnects, it is common for data acquisition systems to require interleaving of streams on the same link (e.g. streaming data and streaming register access). This paper presents a way to leverage existing FPGA hard…
This paper describes the data acquisition system used for data readout from a segmented detector of reactor antineutrinos with active shielding. Theoretical approach to the data acquisition is described and two possible solutions using QDCs and digitizers are discussed. Also described are the results of the DAQ performance during routine data taking operation of DANSS. DANSS (Detector of the reactor AntiNeutrino based on Solid Scintillator) is a project aiming to measure a spectrum of reactor antineutrinos using inverse beta decay (IBD) in a plastic scintillator. The detector is located close …
From April 2013 to the beginning of August 2013, the aSPECT spectrometer was installed on a cold neutron beam facility at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in order to realize a high-precision measurement of the electron-antineutrino angular correlation coefficient a. Among all the upgrades that were made during the past years, a new state-of-the-art acquisition system has been tested during this beam time. This internship report details the behavior of this new system.
We describe the electronics and data acquisition system used in the first phase of the PandaX experiment -- a 120 kg dual-phase liquid xenon dark matter direct detection experiment in the China Jin-Ping Underground Laboratory. This system utilized 180 channels of commercial flash ADC waveform digitizers. This system achieved low trigger threshold ($<$1 keV electron-equivalent energy) and low deadtime data acquistion during the entire experimental run.
The data acquisition system (DAQ) for a highly granular analogue hadron calorimeter (AHCAL) for the future International Linear Collider is presented. The developed DAQ chain has several stages of aggregation and scales up to 8 million channels foreseen for the AHCAL detector design. The largest aggregation device, Link Data Aggregator, has 96 HDMI connectors, four Kintex7 FPGAs and a central Zynq System-On-Chip. Architecture and performance results are shown in detail. Experience from DESY testbeams with a small detector prototype consisting of 15 detector layers are shown.
The majority of high energy physics experiments rely on data acquisition and hardware-based trigger systems performing a number of stringent selections before storing data for offline analysis. The online reconstruction and selection performed at the trigger level are bound to the synchronous nature of the data acquisition system, resulting in a trade-off between the amount of data collected and the complexity of the online reconstruction performed. Exotic physics processes, such as long-lived and slow-moving particles, are rarely targeted by online triggers as they require complex and nonstan…
In this study, we present a low cost and commercially available data acquisition system (DAQ) for an ordinary low alpha proportional counter. By employing this DAQ system and aid of a simple physical model, we can easily rule out the common disadvantage of proportional type low alpha counters, such as sensitive to electromagnetic interference and vibration. The obtained results demonstrated that this method has improved the capability of an ordinary low alpha counter and even makes it easier to operate in a worse ground-loop laboratory.
This paper describes the data acquisition and trigger system of the Thin Time-of-flight PET (TT-PET) scanner. The system is designed to read out in the order of 1000 pixel sensors used in the scanner and to provide a reference timing signal to each sensor in order to measure time differences of better than 30 ps. This clock distribution is measured to have a jitter of less than 4 ps at the sensors. Collected data is locally processed before being forwarded to storage. Data flow as well as control, configuration and monitoring aspects are are also addressed.
A trend for future high energy physics experiments is an increase in the data bandwidth produced from the detectors. Datasets of the Petabyte scale have already become the norm, and the requirements of future experiments -- greater in size, exposure, and complexity -- will further push the limits of data acquisition technologies to data rates of exabytes per seconds. The challenge for these future data-intensive physics facilities lies in the reduction of the flow of data through a combination of sophisticated event selection in the form of high-performance triggers and improved data represent…
A test-bench has been set up at the INFN Sezione di Bologna to optimise key elements of the KM3NeT data acquisition system. A complete framework has been built to simulate a full detection unit and test the optical network, time synchronisation, and on-shore computing resources. A fundamental tool in the test-setup is a customized electronic board: "the OctoPAES". Based on an Altera MAX10 CPLD, it is designed to emulate in a realistic way the optical and acoustic signals recorded by the underwater detectors. They allow to test in extreme conditions the acquisition system and validate its perfo…
We introduce a cost-efficient, and open-source measurement system for measuring and monitoring indoor air quality, aerosol concentration, dust contamination, and comfort-relevant quantities. The system allows to access these quantities simultaneously at multiple sites. The software architecture is described along with the hardware set-up including an overview of the supported measurement transducers so far. The system allows flexible adaptation on laboratory-scales as well as on large-scales like aircraft cabins, vehicles, buildings, and passenger compartments in general.
The Real-Time Systems Engineering Department of the Scientific Computing Division at Fermilab is developing a flexible, scalable, and powerful data-acquisition (DAQ) toolkit which serves the needs of experiments from bench-top hardware tests to large high-energy physics experiments. The toolkit provides data transport and event building capabilities with the option for experimenters to inject art analysis code at key points in the DAQ for filtering or monitoring. The toolkit also provides configuration management, run control, and low-level hardware communication utilities. Firmware blocks for…
The time-of-flight (TOF) system in the Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment is composed of super modules based on multi-gap Resistive Plate Chambers (MRPC) for high-denseness, high-resolution time measurement. In order to evaluate the quality of detectors during the mass production, a distributed data readout system is developed to meet with the high data rate of 6.4Gbps, and a related data acquisition (DAQ) software is implemented under Linux operating system to test and verify the feasibility of the distributed data readout method. In this paper, the DAQ software is focused on data co…
Liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPCs) have been proposed as neutrino detectors that combine both large sizes to maximize the number of neutrino interactions and detailed recording of the interaction. The readout of thousands of channels at MHz sampling rates produce images of the neutrino-nucleus interaction with millimeter-scale resolution, enabling the identification of the resulting particles and offering multiple handles to measure their energies at the expense of large data rates. Continuous acquisition of the LArTPC data is required to enable the use of high-latency triggers fo…
A scientific instrument comprised of a global network of millions of independent, connected, remote devices presents unique data acquisition challenges. We describe the software design of a mobile application which collects data from smartphone cameras without overburdening the phone's CPU or battery. The deployed software automatically calibrates to heterogeneous hardware targets to improve the quality and manage the rate of data transfer, and connects to a cloud-based data acquisition system which can manage and refine the operation of the network.
In this work, we investigated the ability of a high-purity germanium detector connected to a trapezoid-filter-based data acquisition system to reliably record signals in spite of high sample activities. By activating multiple Na$_{2}$CO$_{3}$ samples with different Na content, we were able to deduce efficiency, resolution and dead time of the system used as a function of the sample activity. Based on the results, we were able to find a setting which allows measurements of event rates up to 35~kHz per readout channel with an energy resolution of 0.3\% at the 2754 keV $^{24}$Na line.
The Real-Time Systems Engineering Department of the Scientific Computing Division at Fermilab has deployed set of customizations to our Off-The-Shelf Data Acquisition solution (otsdaq) at the Fermilab Test Beam Facility (FTBF) to read out the beamline instrumentation in support of FTBF users. In addition to reading out several detectors which use various detection technologies and readout hardware, the FTBF Data Acquisition system (DAQ) can perform basic track reconstruction through the facility in real time and provide data to facility users. An advanced prototype smart coincidence module, kn…
