CAEN S.p.A. will supply the Alice experiment at CERN with 710 TDC boards (called “TRM”: TDC Read-out Module) and their 77 special crates with VME64X bus and power supply. The whole system shall be used in the TOF (Time Of Flight) detector and will work under huge magnetic field and moderate radiation. The TRM board developed by CAEN is a custom board (VX1390, derived from the CAEN catalog VME board V1290A) with 240 TDC channels (25 ps resolution). Each board hosts 30 TDC chips developed by CERN/ECP-MIC Division (HPTDC). Due to the radioactive environment, an accurate choice of components is required and the TRMs implement protections from Single Event Latch-up and from Single Event Upset. The boards will be inserted in a special crate developed by CAEN (Mod. SY2390 - “Alice-TOF-box”). The same crate hosts the power supply modules for both the TRMs and the TOF detector front-end modules. CAEN is also in charge for the design and the realization of the water-cooling system of the crate. The whole power supply system guarantees smooth operation in a magnetic field up to 5 kgauss.

The Alice-TOF-box has been presented at 11th Workshop on Electronics for LHC and future Experiments 12- 16 September 2005,  Heidelberg, Germany.