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)
