Implementation of Multi-Channel Time-to-Digital Converter using FPGA

Abstract

The cosmic rays consisting of high energy particles travel from the cosmos, and creates a shower of particles called air showers, mainly consisting of leptons and gamma rays. The detection of these showers is conducted by placing large muon detectors at ground level. The abundance and spectrum shape of relativistic particles in the Milky Way are encoded in the energy and angular distributions of photons. The GRAPES-3 experiment at Ooty, India is involved in the study of these cosmic rays. With an ensemble of air shower detectors and a broad area muon detector, the research work is intended to identify and investigate cosmic rays. The TDC is indeed an essential step in knowing further about cosmic radiation in various parts of the cosmos. The photons' angular distributions were utilised to learn about the concentration and spectrum structure of accelerated particles across the Milky Way. Thus, this project plays a small, but vital role in understanding various aspects of the universe from the tiny speck called Earth.The aim of our project is to design and implement a multi-channel time-to-digital converter (TDC) using a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The designed hybrid counter will enable the precise measurement of time intervals between two signals (start and stop) with an accuracy of sub-nanoseconds.