LHCb upgrade: Development of a large scintillating fibre tracker

The LHCb detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will undergo a major upgrade during the next long shutdown 2019/2020 in order to collect data at an instantaneous luminosity of up to 2×10
³³
cm
^-2
s
^-1
. The higher detector occupancy and higher radiation level require the replacement of the current downstream tracking stations by a Scintillating Fibre (SciFi) Tracker. The SciFi Tracker comprises plastic scintillating fibres, read out by state-of-the-art multi-channel Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) arrays. Current status of studies of the radiation hardness of scintillating fibres and the SiPM arrays, the customized PACIFIC ASIC, the front-end electronics and the testbeam performance of the prototype module are described.