International Workshop on New Photon-detectors 2012

Jun 13 – 15, 2012
LAL Orsay
Europe/Paris timezone

A Fast Waveform-Digitizing ASIC-based Electronics and DAQ for a Position \& Time Sensing Large-Area Photo-Detector System

Jun 15, 2012, 9:45 AM
20m
Amphithéâtre Pierre Lehmann (LAL Orsay)

Amphithéâtre Pierre Lehmann

LAL Orsay

Centre Scientifique d'Orsay - Bat 200 91898 Orsay cedex FRANCE
Oral presentation

Speaker

Mr Eric Oberla (University of Chicago)

Description

A data acquisition (DAQ) system using 10-15 Gigasamples/second (Gsa/s) waveform sampling ASICs for the readout of large active-area micro-channel plate photomultiplier tubes (MCP-PMTs) is presented. Currently being developed by the Large-Area Picosecond Photo-Detector (LAPPD) collaboration, a single MCP photo-detector tile' has an active area of 400 sq. cm and a dual-end, 50-ohm transmission line anode comprised of 30 parallel microstrips. The position, timing, and energy of the incident pulse are extracted from the full waveforms that are recorded at both anode terminals. With this anode geometry, a larger photo-sensitive area may be formed by connecting several detector tiles in series, allowing for the use of the same readout electronics and acquisition system for many potential applications. A custom fast, low-noise, and low-power waveform digitizing ASIC, PSEC-4', was designed in 0.13 $\mu$m CMOS for the front-end readout of these detectors. With 6-channels, the PSEC-4 has a buffer depth of 256 samples on each channel, a chip-parallel Wilkinson ADC, and a serial data readout that includes the capability for region-of-interest windowing to reduce dead-time. Sampling rates of up to 15 Gsa/s are possible on each channel with an analog bandwidth of 1.5 GHz. A flexible DAQ system matched to the large-area detector anode, in which PSEC-4 calibrations and signal feature extraction are implemented in two layers of FPGAs, has been designed and code development is underway. Further details of the readout system, including the PSEC-4 ASIC capabilities and DAQ performance, will be reported.

Primary author

Mr Eric Oberla (University of Chicago)

 Slides