Front-end electronics development for TPC detector in the MPD/NICA project

The article is aimed at describing the development status, measuring results and design changes of the TPC front-end electronics. The TPC is placed in the middle of Multi-Purpose Detector (MPD) and provides tracing and identifying of charged particles in the pseudorapidity range vertical bar eta vertical bar < 1.2. The readout system is one of the most complex parts of the TPC. The electronics of each readout chamber is an independent system. The whole system contains 95232 channels, 1488 64-channel - front-end cards (FEC), 24 readout control units (RCU). The front-end electronics (FEE) is based on ASICs, FPGAs and high-speed serial links. The concept of the TPC front-end electronics has been motivated from one side - by the requirements concerning the NICA accelerator complex which will operate at the luminosity up to 10(27) cm(-2) s(-1) for Au79+ ions over the energy range of 4 < root S-NN < 11 GeV with the trigger rate up to 7 kHz and from the other side - by the requirements of the 4-pi geometry to minimize the substance on the end-caps of the TPC.