[en] The design and measurements of 8-bit DACs based on L-2L ladder architecture are presented. The main design goals were low power consumption and low area. Such features are needed for DACs trimming parameters in each channel of a multichannel readout system. The PMOS and the NMOS based DACs are studied, for wide range of biasing conditions, in two operation modes — as a current generator and a current divider. The NMOS and PMOS prototypes occupying respectively 0.034 mm² and 0.043 mm² are fabricated in 0.35μm CMOS technology and tested. The measurements show full functionality with the maximum INL and DNL errors below 0.4 LSB. The measured DAC power consumption is about 80μW.

[en] The design and performance of a multichannel readout system for radiation detectors are presented. The developed 32-channel prototype system comprises fast, low-noise, front-end followed by a 10-bit multichannel digitizer and on-board FPGA data concentrator, processing the stream of digitized data with up to 6.4 Gbps rate. The operation of the whole system is managed by a microcontroller. The system can work in self-triggering mode or can be triggered externally. The implemented trigger mechanism allows for elaborate event filtering and selection of data to be transmitted to the host through the USB interface. A wide spectrum of measurements showing and quantifying the key system parameters like data transmission rate and event rate, noise, and gain are presented to prove the correct system performance. To increase the power efficiency in experiments with a non-continuous beam structure, a power pulsing mechanism is implemented and verified experimentally.

[en] The design and measurements of the prototype front-end electronics for the luminosity detector (LumiCal) at the International Linear Collider (ILC) are presented. The challenges of the LumiCal front-end electronics are discussed and the proposed architecture comprising switched-gain preamplifier, pole-zero cancellation circuit (PZC) and switched-gain shaper is described. The preamplifier works for a wide range of input capacitance of up to 100 pF. The input charge dynamic range extends from <0.4 fC to >10pC and covers more than four orders of magnitude. To conform with the timing requirements a peaking time (T_peak) of about 70 ns was chosen. The prototype ASIC comprising eight channels was designed and fabricated in 0.35μm CMOS technology. The results of measurements on gain, noise, high count rate performance and crosstalk are presented.

[en] The Beam Radiation Instrumentation and Luminosity Project of the CMS experiment consists of several beam monitoring systems and luminometers. The upgraded Fast Beam Conditions Monitor is based on 24 single crystal diamond sensors with a two-pad metallization and a custom designed readout. Signals for real time monitoring are transmitted to the counting room, where they are received and processed by new back-end electronics designed to measure count rates on LHC collision, beam induced background and activation products to be used to determine the luminosity and the machine induced background. The system architecture and the signal processing algorithms will be presented

[en] The design and tests of front-end electronics for straw tube trackers in the P-bar ANDA experiment at FAIR are presented. The challenges for the front-end electronics, comprising operation at high counting rate up to 1 MHz per straw tube, are discussed and the proposed architecture comprising a switched gain charge sensitive preamplifier (CSP), a pole-zero cancellation circuit (PZC), a second order variable peaking time shaper, a trimming ion tail cancellation circuit, and a baseline holder (BLH), is described. The front-end provides an analogue output and a discriminator with LVDS differential driver for the Time-of-Arrival (ToA) and Time-over-Threshold (ToT) measurements. A prototype readout ASIC featuring four channels was fabricated in 0.35 μm CMOS technology consuming 15.5 mW (analog part) and 12 mW (LVDS) per channel. The results of measurements of peaking time (25–67 ns), gain, noise (ENC 800–2500 el. for various gains), time walk and jitter are presented as well as the first results obtained with prototype straw tubes connected.

[en] The CMS Beam Radiation Instrumentation and Luminosity (BRIL) project is composed of several systems providing the experiment protection from adverse beam conditions while also measuring the online luminosity and beam background. Although the readout bandwidth of the Fast Beam Conditions Monitoring system (BCM1F—one of the faster monitoring systems of the CMS BRIL), was sufficient for the initial LHC conditions, the foreseen enhancement of the beams parameters after the LHC Long Shutdown-1 (LS1) imposed the upgrade of the system. This paper presents the new BCM1F, which is designed to provide real-time fast diagnosis of beam conditions and instantaneous luminosity with readout able to resolve the 25 ns bunch structure

[en] The identification of charged particles based on energy losses in straw tube detectors has been simulated. The response of a new front-end chip developed for the PANDA straw tube tracker was implemented in the simulations and corrections for track distance to sense wire were included. Separation power for p−K, p−π and K−π pairs obtained using the time-over-threshold technique was compared with the one based on the measurement of collected charge

[en] The Fast Beam Conditions Monitor, BCM1F, in the Compact Muon Solenoid, CMS, experiment was operated since 2008 and delivered invaluable information on the machine induced background in the inner part of the CMS detector supporting a safe operation of the inner tracker and high quality data. Due to the shortening of the time between two bunch crossings from 50 ns to 25 ns and higher expected luminosity at the Large Hadron Collider, LHC, in 2015, BCM1F needed an upgrade to higher bandwidth. In addition, BCM1F is used as an on-line luminometer operated independently of CMS. To match these requirements, the number of single crystal diamond sensors was enhanced from 8 to 24. Each sensor is subdivided into two pads, leading to 48 readout channels. Dedicated fast front-end ASICs were developed in 130 nm technology, and the back-end electronics is completely upgraded. An assembled prototype BCM1F detector comprising sensors, a fast front-end ASIC and optical analog readout was studied in a 5 GeV electron beam at the DESY-II accelerator. Results on the performance are given.

[en] The design of the Forward Tracker for the Forward Spectrometer of the PANDA experiment is described. The tracker consists of 6 tracking stations, each comprising 4 planar double layers of straw tube detectors, and has a total material budget of only 2% X _0. The straws are made self-supporting by a 1 bar over-pressure of the working gas mixture (Ar/CO_2). This allows to use lightweight and compact rectangular support frames for the double layers and to split the frames into pairs of C-shaped half-frames for an easier installation on the beam line.

[en] The PANDA spectrometer will be built at the FAIR facility at Darmstadt (Germany) to perform accurate tests of the strong interaction through anti-pp and anti-pA annihilation studies. The charged particle tracking at PANDA will be done using both solid state and gaseous detectors. Among the latter, two straw tube detector systems will be built. The cylindrical, central straw tube tracker features a high spatial and momentum resolution for a wide range of particle momenta from about 8 GeV/c down to a few 100 MeV/c, together with particle identification in the momentum region below about 1 GeV/c by measuring the specific energy-loss. A new technique, based on self-supporting straw double layers with intrinsic wire tension developed for the COSY-TOF straw tracker, has been adopted for the PANDA trackers. The development of the readout electronics for the straw tubes is ongoing. Prototypes have been produced and used to instrument straw tube modules that have been tested with cosmic rays and proton beams. Design issues of the PANDA straw tubes, together with the results of the prototype tests are presented. (authors)