Technical Design Report Super Fragment Separator

2.4.A Appendix
DRAFT
The appendix of the Super-FRS TDR describes components and sub-systems which are strongly
related to the Super-FRS but at the same time have an overlap or are common to other FAIR facilities.
2.4.A1 NUSTAR DAQ
The NUSTAR data acquisition (DAQ) concept tries to incorporate and deal with the changes that
are related to the discontinuation of production and support of all CAMAC and FASTBUS modules,
together with the much increasing number of channels in the different experiments. Dedicated
front-end electronics boards are foreseen in most experiments for NUSTAR. The other main issue
is to provide a maximum interoperability of the different setups of the NUSTAR facility for many
parts of particular setups, detectors systems and their associated DAQ systems. An example is the
in-ring instrumentation of the NESR that will be used in parallel by the EXL and ELISe collaborations.
The same holds for the combination of Super-FRS instrumentation – R 3 B setup, or gamma
spectroscopy arrays in conjunction with reaction setups. As the communities overlap to a large
extent it is favourable to come up with a combined DAQ framework that allows sharing expertise,
thus saving manpower and running cost. The GSI MBS [84] system is an example for such a
flexible DAQ scheme, that provides a generalized multi-processor environment, suitable for the
readout, control and data storage of heterogeneous setups. The necessary extensions of the scheme
have to be evaluated and integrated into the developing system by the NUSTAR DAQ group. A
major part of this will be the integration of ‘foreign’ stand-alone DAQ systems or similarly the
control and operation of various front-end electronics. System integration should be possible at
different stages of the DAQ system.
(a) “NUSTAR” DAQ systems: It should be possible to couple different standalone
“NUSTAR” DAQ systems, together in a simple way. Typically the individual DAQ systems
are used to setup and debug detector groups or experiments. By foreseeing the necessary
interconnects for triggers and control signals and by keeping the modularity of the
system in mind while building local triggers and event buffer capabilities, such a scheme
can be realized. The R 3 B/CaveC setup together with the current FRS is an example where
the necessary prerequisites are currently specified. Note, that different schemes of coupling
might be used here: (i) the systems are synchronized with one common trigger (ii)
the DAQ systems run standalone and are synchronized via timestamps (see section
2.4.A1.1).
(b) Front-end electronics (FEE): For the common NUSTAR DAQ system, specific
front-end electronics together with its digitization part is seen as part of the detector. This
has the advantage that all analogue signal processing is done by the working groups with
the most experience on the particular detector system. Only the control, trigger and data
flow will be specified as interface description by the common NUSTAR DAQ system.
This includes the necessary trigger types to be implemented, such as data, calibration and
synchronization triggers together with a prescription how to lock the FEE to realize a
clearly defined dead time of the total system. The timestamp-data interface has to be
specified and slow control issues like version numbering, firmware revisions, software
up/download from e.g. databases to particular FEE boards require R&D work. A first
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