Abstract

TEJEDA MUNOZ, G. et al. Triggerless charge measurement system for fast characterization with avalanche photodiodes and photomultipliers. Rev. mex. fis. [online]. 2020, vol.66, n.4, pp.475-478.  Epub Jan 31, 2022. ISSN 0035-001X.  https://doi.org/10.31349/revmexfis.66.475.

Particle detectors based on the response of sensitive materials (plastic scintillator, saturated gas, etc.) usually need characterization and test procedures before final installation. Cosmic ray particles are normally used to perform those preliminary tests which include a detailed inspection of the readout electronics and the acquisition of the charge distribution of cosmic ray detection. The Data Processing Interface we propose is implemented in an field-programmable gate arrays (ALTERA family), and is designed to acquire digitized signals from light sensors, of which photomultipliers and avalanche photodiodes are the most common ones. The architecture is based on a medium density field-programmable gate array that continuously reads the data coming from a 10 bit, 40 MHz analog-to-digital converter. Input data is stored in a dual port memory designed to search for valid pulses and compress them by removing data below a programmable voltage threshold. The interface can produce two types of data packets, non-zero and empty packets. Data in non-zero packets is compressed with a lossless technique and marked with a start of data, a time stamp, valid data and data size information for reconstruction purposes. Empty events are generated when the maximum waiting time for a valid pulse is exceeded and information is added to preserve time continuity.

Keywords : Front-end electronics for detector readout; analogue circuit electronic; FPGA data processing.

        · text in English     · English ( pdf )