A time-of-flight system on a chip suitable for space instrumentation

Author

Paschalidis, N. ; Stamatopoulos, N. ; Karadamoglou, K. ; Kottaras, G. ; Paschalidis, V. ; Sarris, E. ; Andrews, B. ; McEntire, R. ; Jaskulek, S. ; Mitchell, D. ; McNutt, R.

Author_Institution

Space Dept., Johns Hopkins Univ., Laurel, MD, USA

Volume

2

fYear

2001

Firstpage

750

Abstract

A time-of-flight (TOF) system-on-a-chip (SoC) for precise time interval measurement at low power and high rate has been developed. A micro-channel plate (MCP) electron multiplier typically produces the start and stop of a radiation event to be processed. The TOF chip includes two Constant Fraction Discriminators (CFDs) and a Time to Digital Converter (TDC). The CFDs interface to start and stop anodes through two simple preamplifiers and perform the signal conditioning for time walk compensation. The TDC portion digitizes the time difference with reference to an external precise oscillator. A first version of the TOF chip developed in a 0.8 u CMOS process achieved ∼350 ps total time resolution, including time walk and time jitter, with ∼20 mW power consumption at a rate of ∼100 K events/sec and ∼30 mW @ 1Mevents/sec. This chip is part of the HENA instrument of the NASA/IMAGE mission launched in March 2000 and is baselined for many other missions including the Energetic Particle Sensor (EPS) of Messenger etc.

Keywords

CMOS digital integrated circuits; digital integrated circuits; discriminators; electron detection; electron multiplier detectors; nuclear electronics; position sensitive particle detectors; preamplifiers; radiation monitoring; readout electronics; space vehicle electronics; time of flight mass spectrometers; timing circuits; timing jitter; 20 mW; 30 mW; CMOS; HENA instrument; MCP; NASA/IMAGE mission; SoC; TDC; TOF; constant fraction discriminators; electron multiplier; energetic particle sensor; microchannel plate; oscillator; power consumption; preamplifiers; precise time interval measurement; radiation event; signal conditioning; space instrumentation; time jitter; time resolution; time walk; time walk compensation; time-of-flight system-on-a-chip; Anodes; CMOS process; Electron multipliers; Instruments; Oscillators; Power measurement; Preamplifiers; Semiconductor device measurement; System-on-a-chip; Time measurement;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, 2001 IEEE

ISSN

1082-3654

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7324-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NSSMIC.2001.1009667

Filename

1009667