Some ideas to upgrade the Atlas RPCs in view of SLHC

This paper has the purpose of summarizing the present knowledge about RPCs in order to propose new ideas on how to improve their rate capability for future applications, in particular to SLHC. It will analyze the experience made in the study of ageing effects on single 2 mm gap RPCs and will study the potential of thin multigap RPCs in applications where a high rate capability is required. The impact of new front end amplifiers in detecting very small charge signals will be also studied to improve the RPC performance. Different SLHC scenarios will be finally considered.