Speaker
Dr
Federico Pilo
(INFN - Pisa)
Description
The EEE (Extreme Energy Event) project studies extensive cosmic ray air showers by means of a network of tracking telescopes installed in high school buildings distributed all over Italy. The telescope, made up of multi-gap resistive plate chambers (MRPC), is built in collaboration with schools by the same students and teachers that will operate the system afterwards.
In the current configuration the MRPC front-end electronics is interfaced with a VME-based system of custom boards and commercial multi-hit TDCs. The upcoming phase of expansion of the telescope network has recently triggered a complete re-design of the chambers control and monitoring, data acquisition interface via a single USB link and user-defined trigger selection. The new design resulted in a very compact and versatile system with a significant cost reduction that will allow more schools to enter the EEE program and to afford the initial costs.
The system architecture will be described in detail, with emphasis on the integration of data acquisition, trigger and GPS into a single unit, control and monitoring of the chamber parameters. Performances of a fully functional prototype will be presented and plans for future operation will be reported.
Primary authors
Mr
Carlo Avanzini
(Università di Pisa)
Dr
Edoardo Bossini
(Università di Siena)
Dr
Federico Pilo
(INFN - Pisa)
Prof.
Riccardo Paoletti
(Università di Siena)
Dr
Serena Partini
(Università di Siena)
