NINO: an ultrafast low-power front-end amplifier discriminator for the time-of-flight detector in the ALICE experiment

Author

Anghinolfi, F. ; Jarron, P. ; Krummenacher, F. ; Usenko, E. ; Williams, M.C.S.

Author_Institution

CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Volume

51

Issue

5

fYear

2004

Firstpage

1974

Lastpage

1978

Abstract

An ultrafast front-end preamplifier-discriminator chip called NINO has been developed for use in the ALICE time-of-flight detector. The chip has eight channels. Each channel is designed with an amplifier with less than 1-ns peaking time, a discriminator with a minimum detection threshold of 10 fC and an output stage. The output pulse has minimum time jitter (less than 25 ps) on the front edge, and the pulsewidth is dependent of the input signal charge. Each channel consumes 27 mW, and the eight channels fit in a 2×4 mm² ASIC processed in IBM 0.25-μm CMOS technology.

Keywords

CMOS analogue integrated circuits; discriminators; nuclear electronics; position sensitive particle detectors; preamplifiers; pulse width modulation; timing jitter; ALICE time-of-flight detector; CMOS analog integrated circuits; CMOS technology; discriminator; input signal charge; minimum detection threshold; output pulse; output stage; particle measurements; peaking time; pulsewidth modulation; time jitter; ultrafast front-end preamplifier-discriminator chip; CMOS technology; Circuit noise; Crosstalk; Detectors; Feedback circuits; Impedance; Jitter; Particle measurements; Pulse amplifiers; Space vector pulse width modulation; CMOS analog integrated circuits; particle measurements; pulsewidth modulation; timing jitter;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9499

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TNS.2004.836048

Filename

1344270