Low Power Fast Pulse Circuit Techniques in the MIT Gamma-Ray Telescope

Usually, circuits for handling fast pulses are designed at low impedance levels and hence operate with relatively high power consumption. In the electronics instrumentation of the MIT Gamma-Ray Telescope, the analog portion of the electronics, which must respond to input pulses as short as 3 ns and which contains about 430 transistors, operates with a power requirement of 350 mw. The entire electronics package of 8000 components (1300 transistors) has a total power consumption of only 500 mw. The initial section of this paper will briefly describe the salient points in the design and operation of the Gamma-Ray Telescope. The subsequent portions will then discuss the signal processing involved in the analog section of the instrument and some design problems peculiar to the conflicting requirements of high speed input pulses and low power circuits.