Experiences with the MTCA.4 solution for the EuXFEL clock and control system

The clock and control (CC) system for the EuXFEL megapixel detectors consists of a multi-purpose MTCA.4 AMC card with a Xilinx FPGA and a custom designed Rear Transition Module (RTM) which provides the CC functionality. The system resides in a MTCA.4 crate with the Timing Receiver (TR) board and synchronises the DAQ system to the general EuXFEL timing. This paper presents the experiences with the prototype system in addition to describing the RTM hardware and the CC system firmware in detail. The tests that have been performed to validate the basic MTCA.4 specifications related functionality are presented first. The next stage of tests involve confirming the system functionality by using the TR board as it would be in the EuXFEL DAQ system and a development board to simulate a Front End Electronics (FEE) unit. The performance metrics in terms of jitter and bit error rates for FEE communication are presented. As a result of the performance tests, the improvements and modifications to the current hardware for the final system are outlined in the conclusions.