Tracking in the silicon tracker system of the CBM experiment using Hough transform

The planned CBM fixed-target experiment produces up to 10/sup 7/ nucleus-nucleus collisions per second, with multiplicities of up to 1000 particles. In this paper we describe an adaptation of the Hough transform for the tracking of particles in the CBM STS detector, together with a possible implementation of the algorithm in hardware using FPGA (field programmable gate array) as a level-1 trigger. Simulations of the Hough transform with central Au+Au data show an efficiency over 90 %. The processing time using FPGA processors is in the order of 10 to 100 /spl mu/s.