MicroTCA and AdvancedTCA equipment evaluation and customization for LHC experiments

The MicroTCA and AdvancedTCA industry standards are candidate modular electronics platforms for the upgrade of the current generation of high energy physics experiments at CERN. The PH-ESE group at CERN launched an xTCA evaluation project with the aim of performing technical evaluations and providing support for commercially available components. Over the past years, different equipment from different vendors has been acquired and evaluated. This paper summarizes our evaluation results of commercial MicroTCA and AdvancedTCA equipment. Special emphasis is put on the component requirements to be defined in view of future equipment procurement. Customized prototypes developed according to these generic specifications are presented for the first time.