A White Rabbit-Synchronized Accurate Time-Stamping Solution for the Small-Sized Cameras of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Sánchez Garrido, Jorge Jurado Caballero, Antonio Jiménez-López, Miguel Arnim, Balzer Prokoph, Heike Stephan, Maurice Berge, David Rodríguez Álvarez, Manuel Díaz Alonso, Antonio Javier Camera Cherenkov Cherenkov telescope array (CTA) This work was supported in part by Amiga-6 Project Grant under Grant AYA2015-65973-C3-2-R and in part by Amiga-7 Project Grant under Grant RTI2018-096228-B-C3 This article presents the Zynq-embedded node for the Cherenkov telescope array (ZEN-CTA) node, a programmable system-on-chip (SoC) with White Rabbit (WR)-synchronization capability. It targets a solution for the uniform clock and trigger time-stamping module of the small-sized telescopes in the CTA. This module is tasked as a distributed acquisition device with a focus on obtaining time stamps for candidate Cherenkov events, which could be generated at potentially high rates from very-high-energy gamma rays and their subsequent distribution over Ethernet. In this context, the customized design of the ZEN-CTA node is examined thoroughly, including its generic implementation aspects and its main functional blocks. The design of the WR-assisted time-to-digital converters (TDCs) for time-stamping analog triggers is presented in detail alongside the implementation of an upgraded high-speed data path (1 Gb/s) for the WR-compatible Ethernet interfaces of the node. The new data path will feature a direct memory access engine for direct software transmissions and a hardware description language (HDL) coprocessor for high-speed forwarding. Next, the time-stamping accuracy of the WR-enhanced TDCs will be characterized alongside the forwarding efficiency of the new data path. Finally, conclusions are drawn, and the main contributions of this research are enumerated, a potential deployment within the CTA infrastructure to support the acquisition of Cherenkov light is considered, and additional use cases are mentioned. 2026-03-02T12:23:14Z 2026-03-02T12:23:14Z 2020-11-24 journal article J. Sánchez-Garrido et al. "A White Rabbit-Synchronized Accurate Time-Stamping Solution for the Small-Sized Cameras of the Cherenkov Telescope Array." IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, vol. 70, pp. 1-14, 2021, Art no. 2000314. DOI: 10.1109/TIM.2020.3013343 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/111805 10.1109/TIM.2020.3013343 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers