Gbit/s Data Transmission on Carbon Fibres

Data transmission at the upgraded Large Hadron Collider experiments, foreseen for mid 2020s, will be in the multi Gbit/s range per connection for the innermost detector layers. This paper reports on first tests on the possible use of carbon cables for electrical data transmission close to the interaction point. Carbon cables have the potential advantage of being light, having a low activation and easy integration into the detector components close to the interaction point. In these tests commercially available carbon fibres were used, in which the filaments had a very thin nickel coating. For these cables data rates beyond 1 Gbit/s over more than 1 m with an error rate of less than 10(-12) could be reached. The characteristics of the cables have been measured in terms of S-parameters and could be converted to a SPICE model. Some outlook on potential further improvements is presented.