Commissioning the Front-End Electronics for the CMS Hadron Calorimeter Upgrade

In the spring of 2015, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN outside Geneva, Switzerland, began a new era of operation at a proton-proton collision energy of 13~TeV. To optimize the data gathered from collisions at higher beam energies and intensities, the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector is scheduled to be upgraded beginning in December~2017. We worked to characterize and calibrate the new front-end electronics, which include charge integrator and encoder (QIE) cards, for the CMS Hadron Calorimeter (HCAL). These electronics are necessary to extract more precise timing data and to combat the signal degradation observed over time due to radiation exposure. We tested over 700~QIE cards for direct shipment to CERN, where they have been assembled into readout modules and await installation. Results from the test suite show reliable performance in the QIEs and promising improvements over current detector technology.