Tiny Triplet Finder (TTF) - a track segment recognition scheme and its FPGA implementation developed in the BTeV level 1 trigger system

We describe a track segment recognition scheme called the Tiny Triplet Finder (TTF) that involves the grouping of three hits satisfying a constraint, for example, forming a straight line. The TTF performs this O(n3) function in O(n) time. The logic element usage in FPGA implementations of typical track segment recognition functions are O(N2), where N is the number of bins in the coordinate considered, while that for the TTF is O(N log(N)), which is significantly smaller for large N. The TTF is also suitable for software implementation and many other pattern recognition problems