In state-of-the-art positron emission (PET) tomography systems, application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs)are commonly used to precisely digitize the signals of analog silicon photo-multipliers (SiPMs). However, when operating PET electronics in a magnetic resonance (MR) system, one faces the challenge of mutual interference of these imaging techniques. To prevent signal deterioration along long analog signal lines, PET electronics with a low power consumption digitizing the signals close to the SiPMs are preferred. In this study, we evaluate the power consumption of the TOFPET2 ASIC. Its power consumption ranges from 3.6 to 7.2 mW/channel as a function of the input stage impedance and discriminator noise settings. We present an analytical model allowing to compute the power consumption of a given ASIC configuration. The configured input stage impedance and discriminator noise have an impact on the coincidence resolution time, energy resolution, and photon trigger level. Since the TOFPET2 ASIC delivers state-of-the-art performance with a power consumption similar or even lower than other ASICs typically used for PET applications, it is a favorable candidate to digitize the signals of SiPMs in future simultaneous PET/MR systems.
Aiming to measure the difference in arrival times of two coincident gamma-photons with an accuracy in the order of 200 ps, time-of-flight positron emission tomography systems commonly employ silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) and high-resolution digitization electronics, application specific integrated circuits (ASICs). This work evaluates the performance of the TOFPET2 ASIC, released by PETsys Electronics S.A. in 2017, dependent on its configuration parameters in multi-channel coincidence measurements. SiPM arrays fabricated by different vendors (KETEK, SensL, Hamamatsu, Broadcom) were tested i…
For a first characterization, we used the two KETEK-PM3325-WB SiPMs each equipped with a 3x3x5 mm${}^3$ LYSO scintillation crystal provided with the PETsys TOFPET2 ASIC Evaluation Kit. We changed the lower of two discriminator thresholds (D_T1) in the timing branch from vth_t1 = 5 - 30. The overvoltage was varied in a range of 1.25 V - 7.25 V. The ambient temperature was kept at 16°C. For all measurements, we performed an energy calibration including a correction for saturation. We evaluated the energy resolution, the coincidence resolving time (CRT) and the coincidence rate. At an overvoltage…
Single photon sensitive detectors used in high energy physics are, in some applications, required to cover areas the size of several m2, and more specifically in very strong demand with15 an ever finer imaging and timing capability for Cherenkov Ring Imaging Detector (RICH) configurations. We are evaluating the Large Area Picosecond Photo-detector (LAPPD) produced by INCOM company, as a possible candidate for future RICH detector upgrades. In this work we perform tests on the second generation device, which is capacitively coupled to a custom designed anode back plane, consisting of various pi…
The upgrade of the ATLAS muon spectrometer for high-luminosity LHC requires new trigger and readout electronics for the various elements of the detector. We present the design of a time-to-digital converter (TDC) ASIC prototype for the ATLAS Monitored Drift Tube (MDT) detector. The chip was fabricated in a GlobalFoundries 130 nm CMOS technology. Studies indicate that its timing and power consumption characteristics meet the design specifications, with a timing bin variation of 40 ps for all 48 channels with a power consumption of about 6.5 mW per channel.
A serializer ASIC and a VCSEL driver ASIC are needed for the front-end optical data transmission in the ATLAS liquid argon calorimeter readout phase-I upgrade. The baseline ASICs are the serializer LOCx2 and the VCSEL driver LOCld, designed in a 0.25-μm Silicon-on-Sapphire (SoS) CMOS technology and consumed 843 mW and 320 mW, respectively. Based on a 130-nm CMOS technology, we design two pin-to-pin-compatible backup ASICs, LOCx2-130 and LOCld-130. Their power consumptions are much lower then of their counterparts, whereas other performance, such as the latency, data rate, and radiation toleran…
In this paper, we present a dual-channel serializer ASIC, LOCx2, and its pin-compatible backup, LOCx2-130, for detector front-end readout. LOCx2 is fabricated in a 0.25-um Silicon-on-Sapphire CMOS process and each channel operates at 5.12 Gbps, while LOCx2-130 is fabricated in a 130-nm bulk CMOS process and each channel operates at 4.8 Gbps. The power consumption and the transmission latency are 900 mW and 27 ns for LOCx2 and the corresponding simulation result of LOCx2-130 are 386 mW and 38 ns, respectively.
TIGER (Turin Integrated Gem Electronics for Readout) is a mixed-mode front-end ASIC developed to readout the new inner tracking detector of the BESIII experiment, carried out at BEPCII in Beijing. The detector is planned to be installed during the 2018 upgrade and features an innovative three-layer triple-CGEM (Cylindrical Gas Electron Multiplier) with analog readout. The ASIC comprises 64 channels, each of which features a dual-branch architecture to extract and digitize the timestamp and charge of the input signal. The time-of-arrival is provided by a set of low-power TDCs, based on analog i…
A 64-channel mixed-mode ASIC, suitable for particle detectors of large dynamic range and high capacitance up to hundreds of pF, is presented here. Each channel features an analogue front-end for signal amplification and filtering, and a mixed signal back-end to digitise and store the signal information. The analogue part consists of a low input-impedance programmable gain pre-amplifier based on a regulated common-gate (RCG) input stage, two shapers optimised for time and energy measurements. The back-end part mainly includes discriminators, TDCs and ADCs, which are used to process the signal a…
We present the design and characterization of TIGER (Turin Integrated Gem Electronics for Readout), a 64-channel ASIC developed for the readout of the CGEM (Cylindrical Gas Electron Multiplier) detector, the proposed inner tracker for the 2018 upgrade of the BESIII experiment, carried out at BEPCII in Beijing. Each ASIC channel features a charge sensitive amplifier coupled to a dual-branch shaper stage, optimized for timing and charge measurement, followed by a mixed-mode back-end that extracts and digitizes the timestamp and charge of the input signals. The time-of-arrival is provided by a se…
LEGEND, the Large Enriched Germanium Experiment for Neutrinoless $ββ$ Decay, is a ton-scale experimental program to search for neutrinoless double beta ($0νββ$) decay in the isotope $^{76}$Ge with an unprecedented sensitivity. Building on the success of the low-background $^{76}$Ge-based GERDA and MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR experiments, the LEGEND collaboration is targeting a signal discovery sensitivity beyond $10^{28}\,$yr on the decay half-life with approximately $10\,\text{t}\cdot\text{yr}$ of exposure. Signal readout electronics in close proximity to the detectors plays a major role in maximiz…
Large-area silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are desired in many applications where large surfaces have to be covered. For instance, a large area SiPM has been developed by Hamamatsu Photonics in collaboration with the University of Geneva, to equip gamma-ray cameras employed in imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. Being the sensor about 1 cm$^2$, a suitable preamplification electronics has been investigated in this work, which can deal with long pulses induced by the large capacitance of the sensor. The so-called Multiple Use SiPM Integrated Circuit (MUSIC), developed by the ICCUB (Univer…
We present the characterization and quality control test of a gigabit cable receiver ASIC prototype, GBCR2, for the ATLAS Inner Tracker pixel detector upgrade. GBCR2 equalizes and retimes the uplink electrical signals from RD53B through a 6 m Twinax AWG34 cable to lpGBT. GBCR2 also pre-emphasizes downlink command signals through the same electrical connection from lpGBT to RD53B. GBCR2 has seven uplink channels each at 1.28 Gbps and two downlink channels each at 160 Mbps. The prototype is fabricated in a 65 nm CMOS process. The characterization of GBCR2 has been demonstrated that the total jit…
The Taishan Antineutrino Observatory (TAO) is proposed to first use a cold liquid scintillator detector (-50~$^\circ$C) equipped with large-area silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) ($\sim$10~m$^2$) to precisely measure the reactor antineutrino spectrum with a record energy resolution of < 2\% at 1 MeV. The KLauS ASIC shows excellent performance at room temperature and is a potential readout solution for TAO. In this work, we report evaluations of the fifth version of the KLauS ASIC (KLauS5) from room temperature to -50~$^\circ$C with inputs of injected charge or SiPMs. Our results show that KLauS…
