A data acquisition system for two-dimensional position sensitive micropattern gas detectors with delay-line readout

We present a data acquisition (DAQ) system for two-dimensional position sensitive micropattern gas detectors using the delay-line method for readout. The DAQ system consists of a field programmable gate array (FPGA) as the main data processor and our time-to-digital (TDC) mezzanine card for making time measurements. We developed the TDC mezzanine card around the Acam TDC-GPX ASIC and it features four independent stop channels referenced to a common start, a typical timing resolution of ~81 ps, and a 17-bit measurement range, and is compliant with the VITA 57.1 standard. For our DAQ system, we have chosen the Xilinx SP601 development kit which features a single Spartan 6 FPGA, 128 MB of DDR2 memory, and a serial USB interface for communication. Output images consist of 1024×1024 square pixels, where each pixel has a 32-bit depth and corresponds to a time difference of 162 ps relative to its neighbours. When configured for a 250 ns acquisition window, the DAQ can resolve periodic event rates up to 1.8×106 Hz without any loses and will report a maximum event rate of 6.11×105 Hz for events whose arrival times follow Poisson statistics. The integral and differential non-linearities have also been measured and are better than 0.1% and 1.5%, respectively. Unlike commercial units, our DAQ system implements the delay-line image reconstruction algorithm entirely in hardware and is particularly attractive for its modularity, low cost, ease of integration, excellent linearity, and high throughput rate.