Wits students showcase South African electronics research at top international conference
Three students from Wits University's High-throughput Electronics Laboratory within the Institute for Collider Particle Physics recently showcased South African electronics research at the international conference ACES 2020.
ACES (short for ATLAS CMS Electronics) is a state-of-the-art electronics conference focusing on upgrades to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's most powerful particle accelerator.
The LHC is housed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. CERN operates the world's largest particle physics laboratory, where scientists from around the world use the most advanced equipment – including the LHC – to study the fundamental forms of matter and energy.
The CERN-South Africa programme is supported by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) and is hosted by the iThemba Laboratory for Accelerator Based Sciences (iThemba LABS), a facility of the National Research Foundation.
ACES 2020 was due to take place at CERN from 17 to 19 March, but was postponed to 26 to 28 May – and converted into a virtual event – because of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns.
Despite these challenges, the three Wits students – Mpho Gift Doctor Gololo (PhD), Edward Nkadimeng (PhD) and Ryan McKenzie (MSc) – worked through the lockdown period to present their work at the conference. The trio are conducting research for the upgrade of the Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) of the ATLAS Detector at CERN.
Nkadimeng and McKenzie presented their work on the reliability testing and upgrade of the low-voltage power supply (LVPS), which powers the future on-detector electronics of the Tile Hadronic Calorimeter.
"We presented two test-station designs for testing the latest version of a switch-mode power supply for the front-end electronics of the ATLAS TileCal," said Nkadimeng. "The new test station significantly improves fault detection and reliability. We further discussed the steps taken to test the new Tile-LVPS, using a custom-based software to perform tests and graphically display and record all performance metrics."
Gololo presented his work on the Tile PreProcessor for the upgrade of the readout electronics, which is part of the off-detector electronics of the Tile Hadronic Calorimeter and is used to process data at a mind-boggling throughput of 40 terabytes per second.
"The Tile Computer on Module (TileCoM) mezzanine board is an FPGA board that is used to remotely configure the on and off-detector electronics as well as to interface ATLAS DCS data to the Tile PreProcessor," Gololo explained. "This contribution presents the deployment of an embedded Linux development of firmware and software on the ZYNQ System-on-Chip."
Prof. Bruce Mellado, Director of the university's Institute for Collider Particle Physics, said: "We are proud that our students were able to continue performing at the highest,world-class level during these trying times".
