The Time of Flight electronics for the PAMELA experiment in space

PAMELA, a cosmic ray telescope, was launched into space on 15th June 2006 from the Baikonur cosmodrome aboard of a Soyuz-U and it is in continuous data tacking since 11 July 2006. The Time of Flight system of the PAMELA telescope allows both to distinguish electrons to antiprotons up to about 2 GeV and to measure the absolute charge of the particle. In order to perform these goals the requested time resolution for the whole ToF system is σ t > 200 ps . To fulfill the detector requirements the read out electronics is been required to have a time resolution better than 60 ps with wide dynamic range for charge measurements. The peculiarity of the developed electronics arises from the need to obtain such a time resolution operating in a satellite environment, which implies low-power consumption, radiation hardness, redundancy and high reliability.