A new front-end electronics chain for timing RPCs

Author

Blanco, A. ; Carolino, N. ; Fonte, P. ; Gobbi, A.

Author_Institution

Dept. de Fisica, Coimbra Univ., Portugal

Volume

48

Issue

4

fYear

2001

fDate

8/1/2001 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1249

Lastpage

1253

Abstract

Recent advances in electronics and counter construction techniques have pushed the timing resolution of resistive plate chambers below 50 ps σ, with a detection efficiency of 99% for minimum ionizing particles. In this paper, we describe a new front-end electronic chain for accurate time and charge measurement in these devices. The circuit includes a fast (2.5 GHz) two-stage amplifier based on monolithic microwave integrated circuits that feeds a fixed threshold discriminator followed by an external time-to-digital converter. The amplified signal is also buffered into an external charge-to-digital converter. All components are commercially available and their number is rather reduced. The system was tested with realistic detector-generated test signals, yielding a timing resolution around 10 ps σ for signal charges above 100 fC and a charge resolution of 3.2 fC

Keywords

MMIC amplifiers; analogue-digital conversion; discriminators; nuclear electronics; position sensitive particle detectors; streamer chambers; timing circuits; 10 ps; TDC; charge measurement; charge resolution; charge-to-digital converter; detection efficiency; front-end electronics; minimum ionizing particles; monolithic microwave integrated circuits; resistive plate chamber; threshold discriminator; time measurement; time-to-digital converter; timing resolution; Charge measurement; Circuit testing; Counting circuits; MMICs; Microwave amplifiers; Microwave devices; Microwave integrated circuits; Signal resolution; System testing; Timing;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9499

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/23.958760

Filename

958760