A 28 nm Bulk-CMOS Analog Front-End for High-Rate ATLAS Muon Drift-Tube Detectors.

Area of Science:

• Particle Physics Instrumentation
• Integrated Circuit Design
• Radiation Detection Technology

Background:

• Small-diameter Muon Drift-Tube (sMDT) detectors are crucial for particle physics experiments.
• Existing analog front-ends face limitations with event detection rates and susceptibility to pile-up events.
• Fast-tracking signal processing is needed to overcome baseline recovery transients and reduce corrupted data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and characterize a novel 28 nm CMOS Analog Front-End (AFE) for sMDT detectors.
• To implement an innovative analog signal processing technique for enhanced event tracking.
• To reduce the impact of fake/pile-up events in radiation detection.

Main Methods:

• Developed a 28 nm CMOS Analog Front-End (AFE) incorporating a Charge-Sensitive Preamplifier (CSPreamp).
• Employed a fast-tracking concept by sampling the slope of the CSPreamp output voltage.
• Characterized the device for input charge range, dead-time, power consumption, and area.

Main Results:

• The proposed AFE achieves a maximum dead-time of 200 ns, significantly outperforming the state-of-the-art (545 ns).
• The device operates within a 5-100 fC input charge range.
• Achieved low power consumption (1.9 mW) and a small footprint (0.03 mm²).

Conclusions:

• The developed 28 nm CMOS AFE offers a significant advancement for sMDT detectors.
• The fast-tracking approach effectively increases detection rates and mitigates pile-up event corruption.
• This technology enables more efficient and reliable data acquisition in high-energy physics experiments.