Development of a time-to-digital converter ASIC for the upgrade of the ATLAS Monitored Drift Tube detector

The upgrade of the ATLAS muon spectrometer for the high-luminosity LHC requires new trigger and readout electronics for various elements of the detector. We present the design of a time-to-digital converter (TDC) ASIC prototype for the ATLAS Monitored Drift Tube (MDT) detector. The chip was fabricated in a GlobalFoundries 130 nm CMOS technology. Studies indicate that its timing and power dissipation characteristics meet the design specifications, with a timing bin variation of ±40 ps for all 48 TDC slices and a power dissipation of about 6.5 mW per slice.