This paper discusses a detailed design approach to determine the optimal input impedance (Rin) and bandwidth (BW) for current preamplifiers in Front End Electronics (FEE) of high-accuracy time measurement systems used in particle detection. Our study shows the effect of the input impedance Rin including the parasitic interconnection inductances of bonding wires between the detector and the FEE. We explain also the development of a new mathematical model for the estimation of the timing jitter of the current preamplifier in the case of using a low capacitor detector (Cd) as diamond. Different simulations based on developed MATLAB Simulink behavioral models are done in addition to an electric simulation of a transimpedance amplifier (TIA) designed in a 130 nm 1P8M CMOS technology which demonstrates the accuracy of the design approach and the timing jitter estimation model.
The CALICE collaboration is involved in the design of compact calorimeters featuring a high granularity. The technical developments have to overcome various design issues such as the power dissipation, the integration of the front-end electronics inside the detector and connections between the parts. A huge collaborative work is required to achieve the devices using common tools and designs.
The Time Projection Chamber of the ALICE experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider features highly integrated on-detector read-out electronics. It is following the general trend of high energy physics experiments by placing the front-end electronics as close to the detector as possible -- only some 10 cm away from its active volume. Being located close to the beams and the interaction region, the electronics is subject to a moderate radiation load, which allowed us to use commercial off-the-shelf components. However, they needed to be selected and qualified carefully for radiation hardness …
The high-luminosity phase of the Large Hadron Collider will provide 5-7 times greater luminosities than assumed in the original detector design. An improved trigger system requires an upgrade of the readout electronics of the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter. Concepts for the future readout of the 182,500 calorimeter cells at 40-80 MHz and 16-bit dynamic range and the developments of radiation-tolerant, low-noise, low-power, and high-bandwidth front-end electronic components, including preamplifiers and shapers, 14-bit ADCs, and 10-Gb/s laser diode array drivers, are presented in this paper.
To probe physics of interest a decade after the LHC begins to take data, the Linear Collider will need to have the capability of performing precision measurements of masses and couplings. We discuss the demands that this places on its associated detectors, and the status of and plans for continued R&D in front-end electronics that is necessary to meet these demands.
We report on the design and testing of novel mixed analog and digital front end ASICs custom made for the single photon detectors considered for the BTeV RICH system. The key features are reviewed, as well as results achieved using electronics bench tests and beam studies.
We present the optical data links for the ATLAS liquid argon calorimeter. The current status of the vertical cavity surface emitting laser failures, the up-to-date results in searching for the failure cause, experiences gained in the searching process, possible backup plans for the optical transmitters and the lessons learned are also discussed.
This paper describes an R&D electronic program for the next generation of linear collider electromagnetic calorimeter. After a brief presentation of the requirements, a global scheme of the electronics is given. Then, we describe the three different building blocks developed in 0.35\mum CMOS technology: an amplifier, a comparator and finally the pipelined ADC
Our world is changing fast. On one hand, technological developments provide us with new and powerful electronics devices on almost a weekly basis. On the other hand, the end-user of these electronics is now rarely required to actually configure the devices, as everything is automated. This "de-empowerment" of the end-user may be detrimental to the scientific community. This is because the unique conditions in which a scientific measurement is performed require the end-user to have unrestricted access to every variable of the experimental setup. In this compendium, a general overview of some po…
An onboard calibration circuit has been designed for the front-end electronics (FEE) of DAMPE BGO Calorimeter. It is mainly composed of a 12 bit DAC, an operation amplifier and an analog switch. Test results showed that a dynamic range of 0 ~ 30 pC with a precision of 5 fC was achieved, which meets the requirements of the front-end electronics. Furthermore, it is used to test the trigger function of the FEEs. The calibration circuit has been implemented and verified by all the environmental tests for both Qualification Model and Flight Model of DAMPE. The DAMPE satellite will be launched at th…
A dedicated front-end electronics has been developed for the trigger chambers of the ALICE muon spectrometer which will work at the future LHC at CERN. These trigger chambers are based on RPCs (Resistive Plate Chambers) working in streamer mode. The number of electronics channels (about 21000) and the fact that RPC pulsed signals have specific characteristics have led to design a 8 channels front-end ASIC using a new discrimination technique. The principle of the ASIC is described and the radiation hardness is discussed. Special emphasis is put on production characteristics of about 4000 chips…
This paper describes the design and testing results of an 8 channels preamplifier-discriminator circuit based on a resistive feedback Transimpedance Amplifier architecture and a Leading-Edge Discriminator stage for fast high-accuracy time measurement systems. The circuit has been designed in a 130 nm CMOS technology. It is intended to be used as a Front-End-Electronics for measuring the Time Of Flight using diamond detectors. The size of the chip is 1.27x1.22mm2 and the total power consumption of one channel is 1.5mW with a power supply of 1.2V. Testing results shows a timing jitter of about 8…
The next generation of collider experiments require tracking detectors with extreme performance capabilities in terms of spatial resolution (tens of $μ\text{m}$), radiation hardness ($10^{17}~1~$MeV n$_{eq}/$cm$^2$) and timing resolution (tens of ps). 3D silicon sensors, recently developed within the TimeSPOT initiative, offer a viable solution to cope with such demanding requirements. In order to accurately characterize the timing performance of these new sensors, several read-out boards, based on discrete active components, have been designed, assembled, and tested. The same electronics is a…
The Particle And Astrophysical Xenon Experiment III (PandaX-III) is an experiment to search for the Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay (NLDBD) using 200 kg radio-pure high-pressure gaseous xenon TPC with Micromegas detectors at both ends and cathode in the middle. A small-scale TPC equipped with 7 Microbulk Micromegas detectors is developed as the prototype detector. 128 channels are readout following an X-Y design with strips of 3 mm pitch (64 channels each direction) from one Micromegas module. Highly integrated front-end electronics composed of 4 front-end cards with 1024 readout channels is de…
CUORE is an array of thermal calorimeters composed of 988 crystals held at about 10 mK, whose absorbed energy is read out with semiconductor thermistors. The composition of the crystal is TeO2, and the aim is the study of the double beta decay of 130Te on very long and stable runs. CUPID-0 is an array of 26 Zn82Se crystals with double thermistor readout to study the double beta decay of 82Se. In the present paper, we present an overview of the entire front-end electronic readout chain, from the preamplifier to the anti-aliasing filter. This overview includes motivations, design strategies, cir…
The HERA-B Outer Tracker is a large detector with 112674 drift chamber channels. It is exposed to a particle flux of up to 2x10^5/cm^2/s thus coping with conditions similar to those expected for the LHC experiments. The front-end readout system, based on the ASD-8 chip and a customized TDC chip, is designed to fulfil the requirements on low noise, high sensitivity, rate tolerance, and high integration density. The TDC system is based on an ASIC which digitizes the time in bins of about 0.5 ns within a total of 256 bins. The chip also comprises a pipeline to store data from 128 events which is …
At the China Jinping Underground Laboratory, the Particle AND Astrophysical Xenon phase IV (PandaX-4ton) in planning is a dark matter direct detection experiment with dual-phase xenon detector as an upgrade of the second phase of the experiment, PandaX-II. In this paper, the prototype of the front-end electronics of PandaX-4ton is presented. The front-end electronics consist of the high-gain preamplifier cards and the eight-channel digitizers with 14-bit resolution and 1 GSps sampling rate for waveform digitization. The clock synchronization circuit within the digitizer is well-designed to ali…
Detectors based on pixels with timing capabilities are gaining increasing importance in the last years. Next-to-come high-energy physics experiments at colliders require the use of time information in tracking, due to the expected levels of track densities in the foreseen experimental conditions. A promising solution to gain high-resolution performance at the sensor level is given by so-called 3D silicon sensors. The excellent intrinsic time resolution of a special case of 3D sensors, the trench type, is limited by residual non-uniformities in the duration of the induced currents. The intrinsi…
This paper presents the design and implementation of the front-end electronics and the data acquisition (DAQ) system for readout of multi-wire drift chambers (MWDC). Apart of the conventional drift time measurement the system delivers the hit position along the wire utilizing the charge division technique. The system consists of preamplifiers, and analog and digital boards sending data to a back-end computer via an Ethernet interface. The data logging software formats the received data and enables an easy access to the data analysis software. The use of specially designed preamplifiers and pea…
For the ATLAS Pixel Detector fast readout electronics has been successfully developed and tested. Main attention was given to the ability to detect small charges in the order of 5,000 electrons within 25 ns in the harsh radiation environment of LHC together with the challenge to cope with the huge amount of data generated by the 80 millions channels of the Pixel detector. For the integration of the 50 micron pitch hybrid pixel detector reliable bump bonding techniques using either lead-tin or indium bumps has been developed and has been successfully tested for large scale production.
The LHCb Outer Tracker is a straw drift detector with a modular design and a total of 53760 readout channels distributed over a sensitive area of 12 double layers of 6x5 m2 each. The main electronics readout requirement is the precise (0.5 ns) drift time measurement at an occupancy of 4% and 1 MHz readout. A total of 128 channels are read out by one Front-End box. About half of the FE-Boxes have been built. Quality Assurance during the production has been performed on single FE-Box components. The assembled FE-Box is finally commissioned using a special FE-Tester. The FE-Tester is a programmab…
In the readout electronics of the Water Cerenkov Detector Array (WCDA) in the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) experiment, both high-resolution charge and time measurement are required over a dynamic range from 1 photoelectron (P.E.) to 4000 P.E. The Analog Front-end (AFE) circuit is one of the crucial parts in the whole readout electronics. We designed and optimized a prototype of the AFE through parameter calculation and circuit simulation, and conducted initial electronics tests on this prototype to evaluate its performance. Test results indicate that the charge resolutio…
A simple circuit for the presentation of the signals from Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chambers (MRPCs) to standard existing digitization electronics is described. The circuit is based on "off-the-shelf" discrete components. An optimization of the values of specific components is required to match the aspects of the MRPCs for the given application. This simple circuit is an attractive option for the initial signal processing for MRPC prototyping and bench- or beam-testing efforts, as well as for final implementations of small-area Time-of-Flight systems with existing data acquisition systems.
The upgrade of the Resistive Plate Chamber (RPC) detector, in order to increase the detector rate capability and to be able to work efficiently in high rate environment, consists in the reduction of the operating voltage along with the detection of signals which are few hundred μV small. The approach chosen by this project to achieve this objective is to develop a new kind of Front End electronics which, thanks to a mixed technology in Silicon and Silicon-Germanium, enhance the detector performances increasing its rate capability. The Front End developed is composed by a preamplifier in Silico…
As part of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment Phase-II upgrade program, new Resistive Plate Chambers will be installed in the forward region. High background conditions are expected in this region during the high-luminosity phase of the Large Hadron Collider, therefore an improved RPC design has been proposed with a new front-end electronics to sustain a higher rate capability and better time resolution. A new technology is used in the front-end electronics resulting in very low achievable thresholds of the order of several fC. Crucial in the design of the improved RPC is the capability of a…
The GOSIP (Gigabit Optical Serial Interface Protocol) provides communication via optical fibres between multiple kinds of front-end electronics and the KINPEX PCIe receiver board located in the readout host PC. In recent years a stack of device driver software has been developed to utilize this hardware for several scenarios of data acquisition. On top of this driver foundation, several graphical user interfaces (GUIs) have been created. These GUIs are based on the Qt graphics libraries and are designed in a modular way: All common functionalities, like generic I/O with the front-ends, handlin…
The Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) is involved in the development of a demonstrator for a SiPM-based camera for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) experiment, with a pixel size of 6$\times$6 mm$^2$. The camera houses about two thousands electronics channels and is both light and compact. In this framework, a R&D program for the development of SiPMs suitable for Cherenkov light detection (so called NUV SiPMs) is ongoing. Different photosensors have been produced at Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), with different micro-cell dimensions and fill factors, in different geometrical arran…
Future experiments of nuclear and particle physics are moving towards the high luminosity regime, in order to access suppressed processes like rare B decays or exotic charmonium resonances. In this scenario, high rate capability is a key requirement for electronics instrumentation, together with excellent timing resolution for precise event reconstruction. The development of dedicated FrontEnd Electronics (FEE) for detectors has become increasingly challenging. A current trend in R&D is towards multipurpose FEE which can be easily adapted to a great variety of detectors, without impairing the …
In this work we present the architecture and results of a fully digital Front End Electronics (FEE) read out system developed for the GALILEO array. The FEE system, developed in collaboration with the Advanced Gamma Tracking Array (AGATA) collaboration, is composed of three main blocks: preamplifiers, digitizers and preprocessing electronics. The slow control system contains a custom Linux driver, a dynamic library and a server implementing network services. The digital processing of the data from the GALILEO germanium detectors has demonstrated the capability to achieve an energy resolution o…
A front-end readout electronics system has been developed for silicon strip detectors. The system uses an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) ATHED to realize multi-channel E&T measurement. The slow control of ASIC chips is achieved by parallel port and the timing control signals of ASIC chips are provided by the CPLD. The data acquisition is implemented with a PXI-DAQ card. The system software has a user-friendly GUI which uses LabWindows/CVI in Windows XP operating system. Test results showed that the energy resolution is about 1.22 % for alphas at 5.48 MeV and the maximum channel…
With the new generation of the RPC, it is possible to work with induced signals of hundreds $μV$, hence the front-end electronics is an important and delicate part of the detector in order to get a detectable signal. The electronic chain is made up of an amplifier, a discriminator, a TDC. The new front-end is realized with the use of silicon-germanium (SiGe) components, provided by IHP microelectronics. With this technology we can implement BJT and CMOS transistors on the same chip. The benefit of this improvement is to minimize: power consumption of the channels ($2 ÷3$ $ \frac{mW}{ch}$), noi…
We have implemented a cost-effective design for the readout electronics of both the anode wires and the cathode pads of large area proportional wire chambers for the HERA-B muon system based on the ASD-08 integrated circuit. To control and monitor the large number of readout channels, we have built a distributed control system based on Philips Semiconductors' I2C bus and microcontrollers. To date we have installed about 10800 channels of muon chambers and electronics. The average single channel noise occupancy is less than 10**-5, and the detectors have been operated with target interaction ra…
Operating HADES at the future FAIR SIS-100 accelerator challenges the rate capability of DAQ and electronics. A new, more robust version of front-end electronics needs to be built for the HADES drift chamber system. Due to the unavailability of the previously used ASD-8 analog read-out ASIC, PASTTREC (PANDA straw tube read-out ASIC) was tested as an ASD-8 replacement in different scenarios including a beam test. PASTTREC falls 20% short of the ASD-8 time precision but performs better w.r.t. signal charge measurements and overall operation stability. The measured time precision as a function of…
Cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe, CZT) radiation detectors are suitable for a variety of applications, due to their high spatial resolution and spectroscopic energy performance at room temperature. However, state-of-the-art detector systems require high-performance readout electronics. Though an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) is an adequate solution for the readout, requirements of high dynamic range and high throughput are not available in any commercial circuit. Consequently, the present study develops the analog front-end electronics with operational amplifiers for an 8x8 pixe…
Application Specific Integrated Circuits, ASICs, similar to those envisaged for the readout electronics of the central calorimeters of detectors for a future lepton collider have been exposed to high-energy electromagnetic showers. A salient feature of these calorimeters is that the readout electronics will be embedded into the calorimeter layers. In this article it is shown that interactions of shower particles in the volume of the readout electronics do not alter the noise pattern of the ASICs. No signal at or above the MIP level has been observed during the exposure. The upper limit at the …
The GABRIELA [1] set-up is used at the FLNR to perform detailed nuclear structure studies of transfermium nuclei. Following the modernization of the VASSILISSA separator (SHELS) [2] the GABRIELA detection system has also been upgraded. The characteristics of the upgraded detection system will be presented along with results from some recent electronics tests.
New front-end electronics including ASICs and FPGA boards are under development for the ATLAS Monitored Drift Tube (MDT) detector to handle the large data rates and harsh environment expected at high-luminosity LHC runs. A mobile Data Acquisition (miniDAQ) system is designed to perform integration tests of these front-end electronics. In addition, it will be used for surface commissioning of 96 small-radius MDT (sMDT) chambers and for integration and commissioning of new front-end electronics on the present ATLAS MDT chambers. Details of the miniDAQ hardware and firmware are described in this …
The ICARUS T600, a liquid argon time projection chamber (LAr-TPC) detector mainly devoted to neutrino physics, underwent a major overhauling at CERN in 2016-2017, which included also a new design of the read-out electronics, in view of its operation in Fermilab on the Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) beam from 2019. The new more compact electronics showed capability of handling more efficiently the signals also in the intermediate Induction 2 wire plane with a significant increase of signal to noise (S/N), allowing for charge measurement also in this view. The new front-end and the analog to digi…
The surface detector (SD) array of the Pierre Auger Observatory containing at present 1680 water Cherenkov detectors spread over an area of 3000 km^2 started to operate since 2004. The currently used Front-End Boards are equipped with no-more produced ACEX and obsolete Cyclone FPGA (40 MSps/15-bit of dynamic range). Huge progress in electronics and new challenges from physics impose a significant upgrade of the SD electronics either to improve a quality of measurements (much higher sampling and much wider dynamic range) or pick-up from a background extremely rare events (new FPGA algorithms ba…
The four LHC experiments at CERN have decided to use a commercial SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) product for the supervision of their DCS (Detector Control System). The selected SCADA, which is therefore used for the CMS DCS, is PVSS II from the company ETM. This SCADA has its own database, which is suitable for storing conventional controls data such as voltages, temperatures and pressures. In addition, calibration data and FE (Front-End) electronics configuration need to be stored. The amount of these data is too large to be stored in the SCADA database [1]. Therefore an ex…
The Time-Of-Propagation detector is a Cherenkov particle identification detector based on quartz radiator bars for the Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB electron-positron collider. The purpose of the detector is to identify the type of charged hadrons produced in electron-positron collisions, and requires a single photon timing resolution below 100 picoseconds. A novel front-end electronic system was designed, built, and integrated to acquire data from the 8192 microchannel plate photomultiplier tube channels in the detector. Waveform sampling of these analog signals is done by switched-cap…
We have developed a dedicated front-end-electronics board for a high-pressure xenon gas time projection chamber for a neutrinoless double-beta decay search. The ionization signal is readout by detecting electroluminescence photons with SiPM's. The board readout the signal from 56~SiPM's through the DC-coupling and record the waveforms at 5 MS/s with a wide dynamic range up to 7,000 photons/200 ns. The SiPM bias voltages are provided by the board and can be adjusted for each SiPM. In order to calibrate and monitor the SiPM gain, additional auxiliary ADC measures 1 photon-equivalent dark current…
ASTRI (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana), is a flagship project of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research whose main goal is the design and construction of an end-to-end prototype of the Small Size of Telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array. The prototype, named ASTRI SST-2M, will adopt a wide field dual mirror optical system in a Schwarzschild-Couder configuration to explore the VHE range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The camera at the focal plane is based on Silicon Photo-Multipliers detectors which is an innovative solution for the detectio…
The General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS) is an Antarctic balloon-borne mission to indirectly search for dark matter through sensitive observation of cosmic antiparticles. The first flight is planned for late 2021. GAPS is the first experiment optimized specifically for detection of low-energy (< 0.25 GeV/n) antideuterons, which are recognized as distinctive signals from dark matter annihilation or decay in the Galactic halo. To achieve high sensitivity to cosmic antinuclei in this low-energy range, GAPS uses a novel particle identification method based on exotic atom capture and decay. The…
The Short Baseline Near Detector (SBND) is one of three liquid argon (LAr) neutrino detectors sitting in the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) at Fermilab as part of the Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) program. The detector is in a cryostat holding 260-ton of LAr and consists of four 2.5 m (L) $\times$ 4 m (W) Anode Plane Assembles (APAs) and two Cathode Plane Assemblies (CPAs), which leads to 11,264 Time Projection Chamber (TPC) readout channels and two separate 2 m long drift regions. As an enabling technology, Cold Electronics (CE) developed for cryogenic temperature operation makes possible an opt…
The RICH detectors of the LHCb experiment provide identification of hadrons produced in high energy proton-proton collisions in the LHC at CERN over a wide momentum range (2 to 100 GeV/c). Cherenkov light is collected on photon detector planes sensitive to single photons. The RICH will be upgraded (in 2019) to read out every bunch crossing, at a rate of 40 MHz. The current hybrid photon detectors (HPD) will be replaced with multi-anode photomultiplier tubes (customisations of the Hamamatsu R11265 and the H12699 MaPMTs). These 8$\times$8 pixel devices meet the experimental requirements thanks t…
The branching ratio for the decay $K^+ \to π^+ν\barν$ is sensitive to new physics; the NA62 experiment will measure it to within about 10%. To reject the dominant background from channels with final state photons, the large-angle vetoes (LAVs) must detect particles with better than 1 ns time resolution and 10% energy resolution over a very large energy range. Our custom readout board uses a time-over-threshold discriminator coupled to a TDC as a straightforward solution to satisfy these requirements. A prototype of the readout system was extensively tested together with the ANTI-A2 large angle…
The detector readout architecture introduced in this paper is intended for small to medium size physics experiments that have moderate bandwidth needs, and applications that require an ultimately low background radioactivity for the parts close to the detector. The first idea to simplify the readout system and minimize material budget is to use a common fanout structure to transport from the off-detector back-end electronics all the traffic required for the synchronization, configuration and readout of the front-end electronics. The second idea is to use between each front-end card and the bac…
The Large Area Water Cherenkov Array (LAWCA) experiment focuses on high energy gamma astronomy between 100 GeV and 30 TeV. Invoked by the idea of hardware triggerless structure, a prototype of LAWCA trigger electronics is implemented in one single VME-9U module which obtains all the data from the 100 Front End Electronic (FEE) endpoints. Since the trigger electronics accumulates all the information, the flexibility of trigger processing can be improved. Meanwhile, the dedicated hardware trigger signals which are fed back to front end are eliminated; this leads to a system with better simplicit…
ALICE is the LHC experiment dedicated to the study of heavy-ion collisions. At forward rapidity a muon spectrometer detects muons from low mass mesons, quarkonia, open heavy-flavor hadrons as well as weak bosons. A muon selection based on transverse momentum is made by a trigger system composed of 72 resistive plate chambers (RPCs). For the LHC Run 1 and the ongoing Run 2 the RPCs have been equipped with a non-amplified FEE called ADULT. However, in view of an increase in luminosity expected for Run 3 (2021-2023) the possibility to use an amplified FEE has been explored in order to improve the…
Liquid argon (LAr) with a high light yield of approximately 40 photons per keV is an attractive target for the direct detection of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which are well motivated galactic dark matter candidates. We studies a front-end electronics design for a LAr dark matter detector with the scintillation read out by PMT, which has an input dynamic range from 5pC to 1nC, and high resolution that single photoelectron can be distinguished. In this paper, we present the design of front-end digital module (FDM) which is the important portion of electronics. The prototype FD…
