Test suite for the LHCb muon chambers quality control

This paper describes the apparatus and the procedures implemented to test the front-end (FE) electronics of the LHCb muon detector multi wire proportional chambers (MWPC). Aim of the test procedure is to diagnose every FE channel of a given chamber by performing an analysis of the noise rate versus threshold and of the performances at the operational thresholds. Measurements of the key noise parameters, obtained while performing quality tests on the MWPC chambers before the installation on the experiment, are presented. The test suite proved to be an automatic, fast and user-friendly system for mass production tests of chambers. It provided the electronic identification of every chamber and FE board, and the storage and bookkeeping of test results that will be made available to the experiment control system during data taking.