CMS pixel upgrade project

The LHC machine at CERN finished its first year of pp collisions at a center of mass energy of 7 TeV. While the commissioning to exploit its full potential is still ongoing, there are plans to upgrade its components to reach instantaneous luminosities beyond the initial design value after 2016. A corresponding upgrade of the innermost part of the CMS detector, the pixel detector, is needed. A full replacement of the pixel detector is planned in 2016. It will not only address limitations of the present system at higher data rates, but will aggressively lower the amount of material inside the fiducial tracking volume which will lead to better tracking and b-tagging performance. This article gives an overview of the project and illuminates the motivations and expected improvements in the detector performance.