Design of a prototype readout electronics with a few picosecond time resolution for MRPC detectors

Abstract

Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chamber (MRPC) is widely used as a Time-of-Flight (ToF) detector in physics experiments, featuring a high time precision requirement both on the detector and readout electronics. Efforts are being devoted to the research of a new MRPC structure, aiming at a much higher resolution, which demands an enhancement of the readout electronics performance. In this paper, a 10-ps prototype readout electronics for the MRPCs is presented. By using the cascaded high performance preamplifiers, gain between 20 dB and 40 dB is achieved for an 8-channel Analog Frontend Electronics (AFE) prototype module. The output signals of the AFE are digitized by a 16-channel high-speed Waveform Digitization Module (WDM), integrating the waveform correction and filtering, digital discrimination, linear interpolation, and other control logics within one Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) device. To evaluate the performance of the proposed design, a series of tests were conducted with synthesized signals from a pulse generator. These signals have the same rise time and width with that of real MPRC output signal, and cover the detector’s charge range. Test results indicate that the prototype readout electronics functions well, and its time resolution is better than 10 ps in the dynamic range of 50–500 fC.