Analogue optical data transfer for the CMS tracker

A description is given of the electronic readout system proposed by the CMS experiment for the microstrip tracker emphasising the technologies which could be employed for transferring the large volume of analogue data from the front end electronics. The system contains both gas and silicon microstrips read out by similar CMOS front end chips, modified to accommodate the different detector characteristics, with pulse height information transferred as analogue values by modulation of the light output of an optical transmitter.