Control System for ATLAS TileCal HVRemote boards

One of the proposed solutions for upgrading the high voltage (HV) system of TileCal, the ATLAS central hadron calorimeter, consists in removing the HV regulation boards from the detector and deploying them in a low-radiation room where there is permanent access for maintenance. This option requires many ∼100 m long HV cables but removes the requirement of radiation hard boards. This solution simplifies the control system of the HV regulation cards (called HVRemote). It consists of a Detector Control System (DCS) node linked to 256 HVRemote boards through a tree of Ethernet connections. Each HVRemote includes a smart Ethernet transceiver for converting data and commands from the DCS into serial peripheral interface (SPI) signals routed to SPI-capable devices in the HVRemote. The DCS connection to the transceiver and the control of some SPI-capable devices via Ethernet has been tested successfully. A test board (HVRemote-Ctrl) with the interfacing sub-system of the HVRemote was fabricated. It is being tested through SPI-interfaces and several devices were already validated. A next version adds a few more ADC/DAC devices for checking their suitability for the final design.