High Density Low Cost Readout Electronics for Large Scale Radiation Detectors

Major upgrades or new constructions at the nations nuclear research facilities require continuing development of the state-of-the-art instrumentation, detectors and readout electronics. As nuclear physicists increasingly design large scale radiation detectors, there are growing needs for high density low cost readout electronics. However, existing off-the-shelf readout electronics is prohibitively expensive for large scale radiation detectors. Affordable digital readout electronics with good time and energy resolution are critically needed to address this need. In this project, we propose to develop a high density, low cost digital spectrometer module that can address the needs by the nuclear physics community to instrument large scale radiation detectors at relatively low cost. The module will be a true spectrometer being able to capture waveforms and provide good time and energy resolution while its cost per channel can be reduced by as much as a factor of 10 compared to that of existing digital readout modules. The goals of the Phase I research are to a) optimize architecture for the high density low cost module; b) develop FPGA firmware to capture up to 1 Gbit/s LVDS signals from the chosen multi-channel ADCs; c) build a prototype board to verify Gbit/s connectivity between multi-channel ADCs and FPGAs; and d) verify spectroscopic performance of the chosen ADCs. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: The proposed instrument has a wide area of applications in various scientific experiments. The increasing needs for improved time, position, and energy resolution in nuclear physics experiments have spurred the rapid development of commercial off-the-shelf high speed, high resolution digitizers or spectrometers. However, it is impractical to use the existing readout electronics to instrument experiments involving hundreds or thousands of radiation detectors. For instance, a commercial off-the-shelf spectrometer, which can record both time and energy information on an event by event basis, can cost from around $3000 per channel for a versatile and high performance lab-based digital spectrometer system to around $800 per channel for less flexible but relatively high density spectrometer modules. The proposed instrument will fill an important need for affordable electronics