• Fibres report:
• Andrea reported that 9 BPMs are using spare fibres (in point 3, 4, 7) as the main ones are broken: that status of the spare fibres not in use is unknown and therefore cannot be assumed they are all working
• Christos reported that an extensive study was done in the little time allocated with the help of two colleagues and Jeremy (EN-EL). Main points:
• Potential usage of 4 fibres for BLM, 3 fibres for BPM (leaving one fibre as spare is compatible in all ARCs
• For the LSS regions, there are spare fibres missing currently but there is space in the ducts to add additional mini-ducts carrying 24 or 48 fibres each. In addition, 3 locations will be consolidated anyway, and additional fibres will be pulled.
• Next step is for the BLM team study the cost of pulling the extra mini-ducts before proposing any modification.
• Clarified the reason why the use of MUX was not possible in the SPS: no risk associated with the use of 4 input MUX for the BPM or 2 way MUX for the BLM.
• Jan clarified that the VTRx will be produced with a wavelength compatible with or without the use of 2-way MUX. Both uses should be possible.
• Manoel presented the scheme proposed for the BPM:
• the main change is the potential need of transmitting a 156 MHz clock: baseline was the use of the scheme used in the LHC
• Jan pointed out that the VTTx would be compatible and also produced as VTx (single transmitter). This is compatible with the contract options as it would be an increase of 12.5% in the produced TOSA and we have enough GBLD
• (Probably this would actually use a CTRx PCB, since then the PCB assembly is always the same and we don't waster GBLDs)
• Christos showed the BLM the various architectures for the communication link can be
• The timeline for the BLM was not presented: Christos said it was already presented in other occasions and currently are in the production and installation preparation phase.
• The first batch of TOSA for the qualification is expected for the last week of March
• The packaged GBLDs will arrive in the last week of March and the testing is foreseen to take place at the firm in Germany in May.
• Jan and Antonio will prepare for next meeting a demonstrator of the optical link based on the architectures presented by the BPM and BLM teams.

AOBs:

BLM ASIC:

-       Christos informed Francois on the recent decision for the BLM ASIC design and production. In summary, the complete system was reviewed and found to fulfil the agreed specifications and is on par with the current BLM front-end system.

-       This becomes now the future baseline system and a new production is requested by EP-ESE to cover the needs for the complete SPS

-       Together with Thibaut thanked and commented the significant contribution of Jan Kaplon.

-       Francois asked to bring the information directly to his team in charge of the foundry requests and note to them the need to retain the masks and tooling for the final production around 2027.   

FCC and future needs:

-       Christos informed on the recently given objectives to follow FCC needs and propose potential electronic building blocks for beam instrumentation that could  operate in high radiation (atm though to be between 50-600 kGy/y).

-       Thibaut mentioned some new WGs being set up within the FCC project to feed into the definition of the tunnel civil engineering and will let ESE know about the one related to radiation, in particular.

-       Francois asks before making any proposal externally to allow higher level discussions to take place and define the building blocks his group will be able to commit.