FRED—Flexible Framework for Frontend Electronics Control in ALICE Experiment at CERN

A substantial part of Distributed Control Systems are SCADA systems that require connection to low level electronics through standard industrial interfaces and protocols. When implementing Distributed Control Systems for physics experiments, it is often necessary to use custom made electronics that do not have the ability to communicate using standard protocols, but instead use custom communication protocols. This paper describes the new Front End Device (FRED) framework, which provides the possibility of connecting custom electronics to standard SCADA systems, thus filling the gap in the implementation of Distributed Control Systems that deploy custom electronics. The FRED framework also serves as a translation layer, which provides translation of raw values acquired from electronics to real physical quantities and vice versa. At the same time, it is easy to use, since there is no need for additional programming when used in the simple mode, and its entire functionality can be configured in several configuration files. In case of the need to perform more complex operations over electronics, it is possible to use the provided API for the implementation of additional program functionalities. Tests of the FRED framework have shown that it is fast and scalable enough for use within the Distributed Control Systems of large physics experiments. Based on experience with the implementation of the FRED framework in real-world systems of physics experiments, it can be stated that it meets all requirements for data processing throughput.