Design and test of a GBTx based board for the upgrade of the ALICE TOF readout electronics

This paper shows the results achieved with a test board that has been designed as a first step towards the upgrade of the ALICE TOF readout electronics foreseen in 2019-2020 at CERN LHC. The board features a radiation hard SERDES ASIC from CERN, named GBTx, which, in connection to the rad-hard optical transceiver VTRx, implements the newer generation optical links for many detector readout systems at LHC. The heart of the board is a commercial FPGA from Microsemi, an Igloo2 device, which is expected to cope with a moderately hostile radiation environment, as a total dose of 0.13 krads is expected in 10 years of beam collisions. The board has been extensively tested with a special attention devoted to the Igloo2-GBTx devices: a measurement of the optical link BER is presented, together with the test results obtained connecting the board to a PC using the standard ALICE DAQ board (C-RORC).