
The ATLAS radiation maps were used to assess the levels of ionizing radiation and neutron fluence. For the TileCal electronics the maximum doses occur at the ends of the drawers where the gap occurs between the barrel and extended barrel. The levels are ~2Gy/year (0.2 Krad/year) ionizing radiation and 1011 neutrons/cm2/year (1-MeV equivalent). The ATLAS standard requires radiation testing to 10-year-equivalent doses together with a safety factor of 5. In addition, since actual exposure is at a much lower dose rate than is practical for testing, an additional factor of 5 for ionizing radiation and 1.5 for neutrons must be applied for bipolar components. Combining these factors, we test components the following levels.
| Ionizing Radiation (Krad) | Neutrons (n/cm2) |
|
|---|---|---|
| CMOS | 10 | 5 x 1012 |
| Bipolar | 50 | 7.5 x 1012 |
Mother Boards 1 has been redesigned. Version 2.0 used a custom serial bus for system control. Version 3.0 uses ATLAS control standards; namely, the TTC (trigger timing and control) system and CANbus systems. Unfortunately, only prototype TTCrx chips are currently available. Radiation testing of Mother Boards 1 will be carried out when the production version of the TTCrx chips become available and are incorporated into the boards. Mother Board 1 is designed with a small daughter-board which contains the TTCrx chip in addition to the FPGA containing the state machine logic used for transmitting commands to the 3-in-1 cards. This allows us to make the TTCrx change without redoing the large cards. This also concentrates the high density pins of the TTCrx (ball grid array) and the Altera FPGA on a small card which is less costly to produce with mechanical high precision.
During the radiation tests the boards were under power and executed a 2 minute test procedure with a duty cycle of ~60%. In this test a variable charge was injected into the 3-in-1 card and digitized to measure the gain and linearity of the fast pulse system. For the slow integrator, the gain and linearity were measured for each of the six gain settings. During these operations the all digitial capabilities were exercised. The output of each cycle was written to disk with a time stamp so the time of any failure could be determined.
All components shown on the schematics have successfully operated to the required doses with no failures on 5 or more cards. In the process of testing, a few components were changed to arrive at the Version 3.1 configuration. The changes are detailed below:
Six complete and fully functional cards were exposed to neutrons and executed test functions throughout the test. There were no failures of any kind. Because of the limited testing time available and the modest strength of the source, the total neutron exposures varied. Cards were tested two at a time. Two were exposed overnight and received a total dose of greater than 1013 n/cm2. Two cards received 4.5 x 1012 n/cm2 and two received 5 x 1012 n/cm2. We conclude that the cards have satisfactory neutron tolerance.