The CBM time-of-flight wall

The key element providing hadron identification in the future Compressed Baryonic Matter spectrometer at FAIR is a time-of-flight wall placed at 10 m distance from the target. The most promising technological option for such a task consists on a 150 m2 carpet based on Resistive Plate Chambers. Due to the fixed-target geometry, the conceptual design foresees two extreme regions: an outermost region (low rate/low multiplicity) covered by float glass RPCs in multi-strip fashion, and a central region (high rate/high multiplicity) consisting of densely packed read-out cells made with low resistive electrodes. The status of the ongoing R&D efforts in both regions is presented.