The LiTE-DTU: A Data Conversion and Compression ASIC for the Readout of the CMS Electromagnetic Calorimeter

The high-luminosity phase of operation of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) will pose new challenges to the detectors and their readout electronics. In particular, the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) barrel electromagnetic calorimeter will require a full redesign of the electronic readout chain in order to cope with the increase in luminosity and trigger rate. In this framework, a new application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) integrating A/D conversion, lossless data compression, and high-speed transmission has been developed and tested. The ASIC, named Lisboa-Torino Ecal Data Transmission Unit (LiTE-DTU), is designed in a commercial CMOS 65-nm process and embeds two 12-bit, 160-MS/s analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), a data selection and compression logic, and a 1.28-Gb/s output serial link. The high-speed 1.28-GHz clock is generated internally from the 160-MHz input by a clock multiplication phase-locked loop (PLL). The circuit has been designed implementing radiation-tolerant techniques in order to work in the harsh environment of the HL-LHC upgrade. The LiTE-DTU is currently in the preproduction phase. A sample of 600 chips has been tested and incorporated into front-end (FE) boards for systems performance testing.