The sROD module for the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter Phase-II Upgrade Demonstrator

TileCal is the central hadronic calorimeter of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The main upgrade of the LHC to increase the instantaneous luminosity is scheduled for 2022. The High Luminosity LHC, also called upgrade Phase-II, will imply a complete redesign of the read-out electronics in TileCal. In the new read-out architecture, the front-end electronics aims to transmit full digitized information to the back-end system in the counting rooms. Thus, the back-end system will also provide digital calibrated information with enhanced precision and granularity to the first level trigger to improve the trigger efficiencies. The demonstrator project is envisaged to qualify this new proposed architecture. A reduced part of the detector, 1/256 of the total, will be equipped with the new electronics during 2014 to evaluate the proposed architecture in real conditions. The upgraded Read-Out Driver (sROD) will be the core element of the back-end electronics in Phase-II. The sROD module is designed on a double mid-size AMC format and will operate under an AdvancedTCA framework. The module includes two Xilinx Series 7 Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for data receiving and processing, as well as the implementation of embedded systems. Related to optical connectors, the sROD uses 4 QSFPs to receive and transmit data from the front-end electronics and 1 Avago MiniPOD to send preprocessed data to the first level trigger system. An SFP module maintains the compatibility with the existing hardware. A complete description of the sROD module for the demonstrator including the main functionalities, circuit design and the control software and firmware will be presented.