Trigger System of BESIII

The trigger system of Beijing Spectrometer III, part of the upgrade of Beijing Electron Positron Collider, has been designed and implemented, and is ready for installation. This paper describes briefly the system components, its characteristics, and some technical issues. The system consists mainly of four parts: MDC (drift chamber) tracking subsystem, EMC (electromagnetic calorimeter) subsystem, TOF (time of flight) subsystem and global trigger. Some highlights in designing of this system includes: trigger scheme optimization with software simulation; optical transmission between trigger and FEEs to realize isolation with FEEs to avoid ground loop current interference; designed with most latest FPGA (Xilinx Spartan 3, VirtexII Pro...) for simplicity, high reliability and easy maintenance and hence smaller system; FPGA in-system programming or firmware online downloadable via onboard, panel connector and/or VME bus for modification flexibility during commissioning. Different from the usual fix delay data transmission from FEE to trigger, the RocketIO has been used as SEDES.