Tracking the tiniest particles

India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) collaboration is working towards building a massive magnetised Iron Calorimeter (ICAL) detector. Equipped with 50,000 tonnes of iron absorber and Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) as its active detector elements, ICAL will detect the elusive neutrinos and precisely determine their oscillation parameters. ICAL is designed to send signatures of these interesting events, on its 3.6 million electronic readout channels. 

We will give an overview of the signal generation and transmission in the RPCs from the perspective of high speed front-end electronics design using ASICs. We will also discuss ICAL's proposed trigger, timing, data acquisition, slow control and monitor system architectures, all of which are planned to be implemented using programmable VLSI devices, high speed serial links and VME back ends.