Research Of High Time Precision MRPC Readout Electronics Based On SCA

In particle physics experiments,particle identification is an important task,and the Time-of-Flight(TOF)technique is an effective method for it.Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chamber(MRPC),featuring good time resolution,is widely used as TOF detectors.With the development of nuclear and particle physics experiments,higher time resolution is required,both on the MRPC detector and its readout electronics.One traditional technique of MRPC readout electronics is based on high-speed amplifier&discriminator and Time-to-Digital Converter(TDC),and overall time resolutions of around 20 ps are successfully achieved for these electronics.However,due to the latest requirement of next generation high time precision detectors,efforts should be devoted to research on higher-level readout electronics.Aiming at the readout requirement of next generation MRPC,the work in this dissertation focuses on high time precision electronics design based on waveform digitization using Switched Capacitor Array(SCA),In this work,studies were made on readout scheme of MPRC according to the characteristics of the detector output signal,and verification electronics were desgined and tested in order to estimate the performance.Considering that the limit of the cell umber in the SCA is an obstacle to enlarge the dynamic range of time measurement,we designed the electronics based on combination of coarse time measurement using a pair of counters and fine time measurement using SCAs.This dissertation is organized as follows.Chapter 1 introduces the application and development of MRPC detectors in particle physics experiment.And then,two technical routes for time measurement are introduced.One is based on discriminator and TDC,and the other is based on amplifier and SCA.Finally,the main content of this dissertation is outlined.Chapter 2 reviews the main methods applied in the two aforementioned technical routes in detail,which provide important references for the high time precision readout electronics design in my work.Chapter 3 presents the design scheme of high time precision readout electronics for MPRC,According to the characteristics of the MPRC output signal,the electronics are designed based on high speed amplification and waveform digitzation based on SCAs.After that,the design scheme of Analog Frontend Electronics(AFE)module and waveform digitization module(WDM)are presented.Chapter 4 presents the design of the hardware circuits,including the optimization of circuit structure and parameters.Chapter 5 introduces the design of processing logic in WDM,including amplitude correction,time correction,FIR filter,time measurement,and data interface logic.Chapter 6 presents the test results of the prototype readout electronics.The results indicate that a time resolution of better than 10 ps is successfully achieved.Chapter 7 summarizes the work of this dissertation,and presents the plan for further research in this direction.