Speaker
Description
The improvement in sensibility and accuracy of event detection underwater is among the most notable changes projected for the next generation of Cherenkov light neutrino detector Hyper-Kamiokande. To achieve this goal, the front-end electronics have been renovated to perform the analog to digital conversion next to the PMTs, in a vessel underwater. This overhaul has produced the need to have a management system that can provide information about the status of the different elements of the front-end electronics, and configuring the data-taking related parameters remotely, as the vessel will not be physically accessible once the tank is closed. This work describes the software stack built on top of the Data Processing Board (DPB) that serves that purpose. To develop this software, strategies usually followed in reliable applications for automotive and datacenters industries are researched and applied to the DPB. The outcome is a Linux-based software stack running on a heterogenous hardware architecture that performs self-monitoring of the most crucial processes that allows to know the status of the electronics and to take data from the PMTs through high speed multigigabit links. Also, given the increased complexity of the software stack with respect to other embedded solutions, a customized bootup procedure with fallback mechanisms has been developed to ensure that the software remains operational even in the presence of errors due to malfunction over time. This software is running on pre-series units of the DPB and has been tested, giving the desired throughput and fulfilling the required specifications of the front-end.
| Minioral | Yes |
|---|---|
| IEEE Member | No |
| Are you a student? | Yes |