[en] Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chamber (MRPC) is widely used in many major international projects as an important element of the Time-of-flight (TOF) system because of its high time resolution. The typical time resolution of a MRPC system is about 60 ps, while the intrinsic time resolution of the MRPC detector can be smaller than 20 ps. This paper aims to improve the time resolution preformance of a 32-gap, 104 μm-thick MRPC system by optimising the readout electronics, which consists of a current mirror (CM) and a modified transimpedance amplifier (TIA). A nominal time resolution of 11.37 ps can be achieved for a MRPC detector with a delta current signal input and a charge of around 34 fC according to a MATLAB simulation. The MRPC system using this preamplifier can achieve a time resolution of 27 ps combining with high-speed waveform sampling method.

[en] With the development of high-speed readout electronics, the digital pulse shape discrimination (PSD) methods have attracted the attention of more researchers, especially in the field of high energy physics and neutron detection. How to choose a PSD algorithm and corresponding data acquisition system (DAQ) naturally becomes a critical problem to settle down for the detection system designers. In this paper, the relationship between the classification performance of different PSD algorithms and digitizers' sampling properties (including sampling rate and the effective number of bits) has been researched based on $\mathrm{L}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{B}{\mathrm{r}}_3$:Ce scintillation detectors. A self-developed integrated digitizer configured with five different ADCs and a WavePro 404HD oscilloscope were deployed to digitize the waveforms from $\mathrm{L}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{B}{\mathrm{r}}_3$:Ce scintillators. Moreover, three PSD methods, charge comparison method (CCM), least square for classification method (LS) and Fisher's linear discriminant analysis (LDA), based on linear model were applied to discriminate the alpha signals from the intrinsic isotope ${}^{227}$Ac. With the LS method and a 125 MSPS 14-Bit ADC, the FoM value was 1.424$\pm <!--\; ??\; -->$0.042, which is similar to the result from LDA but 31% better than the result of CCM. The discrimination results showed that the performances of LS and LDA are less affected by the sampling rate with respect to the CCM method, which reflects in a better PSD capability. The results of this paper can help the developers of detector systems to make a trade-off among sampling properties, desirable discrimination results and the cost of systems.

[en] Sufficient current pulse information of nuclear radiation detectors can be retained by direct waveform digitization owing to the improvement of digitizer's performance. In many circumstances, reasonable cost and power consumption are on demand while the energy resolution and PSD performance should be ensured simultaneously for detectors. This paper will quantitatively analyse the influence of vertical resolution and sampling rate of digitizers on the energy resolution and PSD performance. The energy resolution and PSD performance can be generally optimized by improving the sampling rate and ENOB (effective number of bits) of digitizers. Several integrated digitizers, with sampling rates varying from 100 MSPS to 500 MSPS and vertical resolution ranging from 12-Bit to 16-Bit, were designed and integrated with a CLYC detector for verifications. Experimental results show good accordance with theoretical calculations. The conclusion can give guidance to designs of digitizes for similar applications in need of optimizing the energy resolution and PSD performance, and help to choose proper digitizers for different requirements.