Data Acquisition Architecture and Online Processing System for the HAWC gamma-ray observatory
Abstract
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov observatory (HAWC) is an air shower array devised for TeV gamma-ray astronomy. HAWC is located at an altitude of 4100 m a.s.l. in Sierra Negra, Mexico. HAWC consists of 300 Water Cherenkov Detectors, each instrumented with 4 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). HAWC re-uses the Front-End Boards from the Milagro experiment to receive the PMT signals. These boards are used in combination with Time to Digital Converters (TDCs) to record the time and the amount of light in each PMT hit (light flash). A set of VME TDC modules (128 channels each) is operated in a continuous (dead time free) mode. The TDCs are read out via the VME bus by Single-Board Computers (SBCs), which in turn are connected to a gigabit Ethernet network. The complete system produces ~ 500 MB/s of raw data. A high-throughput data processing system has been designed and built to enable real-time data analysis. The system relies on off-the-shelf hardware components, an open-source software technology for data transfers (ZeroMQ) and a custom software framework for data analysis (AERIE). Multiple trigger and reconstruction algorithms can be combined and run on blocks of data in a parallel fashion, producing a set of output data streams which can be analyzed in real time with minimal latency (< 5 s). This paper provides an overview of the hardware set-up and an in-depth description of the software design, covering both the TDC data acquisition system and the real-time data processing system. The performance of these systems is also discussed.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1709.03751,
title = {Data Acquisition Architecture and Online Processing System for the HAWC gamma-ray observatory},
author = {HAWC collaboration and A. U. Abeysekara and R. Alfaro and C. Alvarez and J. D. Álvarez and R. Arceo and J. C. Arteaga-Velázquez and H. A. Ayala Solares and A. S. Barber and B. M. Baughman and N. Bautista-Elivar and J. Becerra Gonzalez and E. Belmont-Moreno and S. Y. BenZvi and D. Berley and M. Bonilla Rosales and J. Braun and R. A. Caballero-Lopez and K. S. Caballero-Mora and A. Carramiñana and M. Castillo and U. Cotti and J. Cotzomi and E. de la Fuente and C. De León and T. DeYoung and J. Diaz-Cruz and R. Diaz Hernandez and J. C. Díaz-Vélez and B. L. Dingus and M. A. DuVernois and R. W. Ellsworth and D. W. Fiorino and N. Fraija and A. Galindo and F. Garfias and M. M. González and J. A. Goodman and V. Grabski and M. Gussert and Z. Hampel-Arias and J. P. Harding and C. M. Hui and P. Hüntemeyer and A. Imran and A. Iriarte and P. Karn and D. Kieda and G. J. Kunde and A. Lara and R. J. Lauer and W. H. Lee and D. Lennarz and H. León Vargas and E. C. Linares and J. T. Linnemann and M. Longo Proper and R. Luna-García and K. Malone and A. Marinelli and S. S. Marinelli and O. Martinez and J. Martínez-Castro and H. Martínez-Huerta and J. A. J. Matthews and J. McEnery and E. Mendoza Torres and P. Miranda-Romagnoli and E. Moreno and M. Mostafá and L. Nellen and M. Newbold and R. Noriega-Papaqui and T. Oceguera-Becerra and B. Patricelli and R. Pelayo and E. G. Pérez-Pérez and J. Pretz and C. Rivière and D. Rosa-González and E. Ruiz-Velasco and J. Ryan and H. Salazar and F. Salesa Greus and F. E. Sanchez and A. Sandoval and M. Schneider and S. Silich and G. Sinni and A. J. Smith and K. Sparks Woodle and R. W. Springer and I. Taboada and P. A. Toale and K. Tollefson and I. Torres and T. N. Ukwatta and L. Villaseñor and T. Weisgarber and S. Westerhoff and I. G. Wisher and J. Wood and T. Yapici and G. B. Yodh and P. W. Younk and D. Zaborov and A. Zepeda and H. Zhou},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.03751},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
14 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A