Virtual Prototyping Framework for Pixel Detector Electronics in High Energy Physics

February 6, 2025

By

Sensing / Conditioning

Researchers at CERN and KU Leuven have developed a virtual prototyping framework for pixel detectors based on C++/SystemC in the winning paper at the DVcon Europe 2024 conference. 

PixESL offers a platform for describing detector ASICs designed for High Energy Physics experiments at a high level of abstraction, with the capability to simulate the entire process from particle interaction in the sensor to the readout of a digital data packet to the experiment back-end.

The framework supports modelling analog/digital front-end, readout networks, data processing and formatting. This paper details the implementation of the PixESL framework and its use in a pixel detector being developed for the LHCb experiment at CERN as a rapid prototyping method, and a reference model for verification.

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