IBIC2026 - 15th International Beam Instrumentation Conference

Operational experience with the RF-SoC for the HL-LHC BPM system

WEP009

2 Sept 2026, 16:00

2h

Ballroom C (Whistler Conference Centre)

Poster Presentation MC07: Data Acquisition and Processing Platforms Wednesday Poster Session 3

Speaker

Chris Hulley (European Organization for Nuclear Research)

Description

The High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC requires new Beam Position Monitor (BPM) Data Acquisition Electronics capable of improved resolution and robustness. The new system is based on a Xilinx RF System-on-Chip, which digitises the eight BPM signals using integrated high-speed ADCs. During testing at the end of 2025, significant perturbations were observed in the system’s orbit measurements after injection. Subsequent tests revealed that the cause was the internal background calibration mechanism of the ADC, which aims to compensate for drifts due to temperature of the gain, offset and time skew of the internal sub-ADCs. This paper discusses the challenges and benefits of using Xilinx RFSoCs for signals commonly found in beam instrumentation applications. In addition to the Internal Calibration, other potential pitfalls and opportunities of the SoC will be discussed including Multi Tile Synchronisation, and runtime configuration of internal Digital Down Samplers.