A Modular Approach to Acquisition Systems for Future CERN Beam Instrumentation Developments

This paper will present the new modular architecture adopted as a baseline by the CERN Beam Instrumentation Group for its future acquisition system developments. The main blocks of this architecture are: radiation tolerant digital front-ends; a latency deterministic multi gigabit optical link; a high pin count FMC carrier used as a VME-based back-end for data concentration and processing. Details will be given on the design criteria for each of these modules as well as examples of their use in systems currently being developed at CERN.