A new multi-level time over threshold method for energy resolving multi-channel systems

Nowadays, pixellated detectors are applied to many fields such as medical imaging, high energy physics, synchrotron applications, etc. They often require energy resolving function in the detector system while the large amount of data even prevent from the use of energy information in the pixellated radiation detectors. Such an energy-resolving multi-channel detector system must overcome their processing speed, reliability, and power consumption issues. In this point of view, a simple and robust architecture is strongly demanded. Recently we are studying about the pulse processing system architecture relying on the ToT (Time over threshold) method [1,2]. The ToT method directly converts the signal pulse height into pulse width in the early stage of the front-end signal, which greatly simplifies the system. However, there still remain issues on the linearity and the dynamic range in the ToT method.