Development of a PicoTDC based board: USB interface and test beams measurements

The TOF (Time-of-Flight) readout system of the ALICE experiment at the LHC is based on a TDC Readout Module (TRM) hosting a TDC produced by CERN in the early 2000s. This thesis is part of the TRM2 project, producing a new card based on the newly produced PicoTDC. This thesis describes the firmware and software development for readout, control and configuration of a test board hosting a PolarFire FPGA and two PicoTDC ASICs and the configuration of two LIROC ASICs, integrated in two mezzanine cards plugged on the board, through an USB Super-Speed interface. Both firmware and software were built considering the IPBus protocol already developed by CERN and adapted to the new USB interface. The IPBus implements a master-slave structure in which each slave is identified by a 32-bit address and communicates with the master through a 32-bit data bus. The DAQ chain was then tested at CERN in June 2024 in a test beam to test its stability and the performance. During the operation at the test beam, the system proved to be fast and reliable over the long run. A set of six data acquisition runs were then used to get a preliminary result on the time resolution of an LGAD-LIROC-PicoTDC DAQ chain obtaining σ = 42.83 ± 0.18 ps.