The WASA data acquisition system (WDAQ)
Lars Gustafsson, P. Marciniewski, A. Sukhanov · IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science · 1999
The WASA Data Acquisition System (WDAQ) is described. It is a modular, and scalable network based system. The chosen structure facilitate that different old and new front-end electronics standards can work together in an efficient way. Fast hardware triggers are created from discriminated signals from specific parts of the WASA detector by extensive use of programmable logic. The trigger logic is configured to do cluster finding in one or two dimensions. The front-end data is linked together in an event-building switch using the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) protocol and sent to different PC-stations for further filtering, before put onto tape. The data analysis software is using the ROOT (CERN) system which provides a set of object oriented frameworks with all the functionality needed to handle and analyze large amounts of data in a very efficient way. The slow control software is based on the MIDAS (PSI/TRIUMF) system and comprises a fast online database to keep and monitor all WDAQ parameters.