Design and implementation of a data transfer protocol via optical fiber

Future experiments at the new accelerator facility FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) for the research with ion and anti-proton beams require new developments of front-end electronics to tolerate high data rate. We have developed a PCIe card and front-end cards equipped with the small form-factor pluggable (SFP) transceivers for the data transfer via optical fiber. A new protocol has been designed and implemented on the FPGAs in order to provide communication between the PCIe card and the front-end cards. The standard data acquisition (DAQ) system at GSI, multi-branch system (MBS), has been upgraded to support the PCIe cards and is working stably with the data transfer rate up to 180 Mbytes per second.