A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Design of the analog front-end for the Timepix3 and Smallpix hybrid pixel detectors in 130 nm CMOS technology
Authors: Gaspari MD, Alozy J, Ballabriga R, Campbell M, Frojdh E, Idarraga J, Kulis S, Llopart X, Poikela T, Valerio P, Wong W
Publication year: 2014
Journal:: Journal of Instrumentation
Journal name in source: Journal of Instrumentation
Volume: 9
Issue: 01
Number of pages: 13
ISSN: 1748-0221
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/9/01/C01037
Web address : http://stacks.iop.org/1748-0221/9/i=01/a=C01037
Abstract
This paper describes a front-end for hybrid pixel readout chips, which was developed for the Timepix3 and Smallpix ASICs. The front-end contains a single-ended preamplifier with a structure for leakage current compensation which can handle both signal polarities, and a single-threshold discriminator with compensation for pixel-to-pixel mismatch. Preamplifier and discriminator are required to be fast, to allow a Time-Of-Arrival (TOA) measurement with a resolution of 1.56 ns. Time-Over-Threshold (TOT) is also measured; the monotonicity of TOT with respect to the input charge is greatly improved as compared to the previous Timepix chip. The analog area is only 55 μm × 13.5 μm. Timepix3 has already been fabricated and the first test results are also presented in this paper.
This paper describes a front-end for hybrid pixel readout chips, which was developed for the Timepix3 and Smallpix ASICs. The front-end contains a single-ended preamplifier with a structure for leakage current compensation which can handle both signal polarities, and a single-threshold discriminator with compensation for pixel-to-pixel mismatch. Preamplifier and discriminator are required to be fast, to allow a Time-Of-Arrival (TOA) measurement with a resolution of 1.56 ns. Time-Over-Threshold (TOT) is also measured; the monotonicity of TOT with respect to the input charge is greatly improved as compared to the previous Timepix chip. The analog area is only 55 μm × 13.5 μm. Timepix3 has already been fabricated and the first test results are also presented in this paper.
UTU Research Portal