DC-DC Conversion Powering Schemes for the CMS Tracker at Super-LHC

The CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva, houses the largest silicon strip tracker ever built. For the foreseen luminosity upgrade of the LHC, the Super-LHC, however, a completely new silicon tracker will have to be constructed. One out of several major improvements currently under consideration is the implementation of a track trigger, with tracking information being provided to the first level trigger. Such an intelligent tracker design, utilising fast digital readout electronics, will most certainly lead to an increased power consumption, compared to today's tracker. In combination with the desire to reduce the amount of passive material inside the tracking volume and the impracticality to exchange or even add additional supply cables, a novel powering scheme will be inevitable. In this article a powering scheme based on DC-DC conversion is proposed, and requirements for the DC-DC converters are discussed. Studies of important DC-DC converter quantities such as the power efficiency, conducted and radiated noise levels, and material budget are presented, and a possible implementation of DC-DC buck converters into one proposed track trigger layout is sketched.