The TTC-system (Timing, Trigger and Control) is responsible for distributing the bunch clock, carrying the level-1 trigger accept decision and some control commands to the detector sub-partitions. The current system employs a unidirectional optical link multiplexing two channels at 40Mb/s each, and an external electrical link is employed to allow busy/throttle status signals propagation from the front-end buffers to the trigger control system.
An alternative for this system, based on FPGAs and Passive Optical Networks (PONs) was proposed in order to overcome the limitations of the current TTC-system (low bandwidth, lack of bidirectionality). Passive Optical Networks are a consolidated solution widely adopted by the telecommunication industry in the FTTx (Fibre to the X) premises for delivering high bandwidth to the subscribers. It is based on a point-to-multipoint optical communication system, which allows bidirectional data transmission in two different wavelengths.
We will present the evolution of the TTC-PON prototype and its recent developments, focusing on the key features, performances and form factor of the demonstrator to be distributed to the experiments at the end of the year.
