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Design and development of multi-channel front end electronics based on dual-polarity charge-to-digital converter for SiPM detector applications

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Abstract

With the development of silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) technology, front-end electronics for SiPM signal processing have been highly sought after in various fields. A compact 64-channel front-end electronics (FEE) system achieved by field-programmable gate array-based charge-to-digital converter (FPGA-QDC) technology was built and developed. The FEE consists of an analog board and FPGA board. The analog board incorporates commercial amplifiers, resistors, and capacitors. The FPGA board is composed of a low-cost FPGA. The electronics performance of the FEE was evaluated in terms of noise, linearity, and uniformity. A positron emission tomography (PET) detector with three different readout configurations was designed to validate the readout capability of the FEE for SiPM-based detectors. The PET detector was made of a 15 × 15 lutetium–yttrium oxyorthosilicate (LYSO) crystal array directly coupled with a SiPM array detector. The experimental results show that FEE can process dual-polarity charge signals from the SiPM detectors. In addition, it shows a good energy resolution for 511-keV gamma photons under the dual-end readout for the LYSO crystal array irradiated by a Na-22 source. Overall, the FEE based on FPGA-QDC shows promise for application in SiPM-based radiation detectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Frontier and Interdisciplinary Science, Shandong University, Qingdao, 266237, China

    Yu-Ying Li, Chang-Yu Li & Kun Hu

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  1. Yu-Ying Li
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  2. Chang-Yu Li
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Yu-Ying Li, Chang-Yu Li and Kun Hu. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Kun Hu and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Kun Hu.

Additional information

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (No. ZR2022QA039) and the Program of Qilu Young Scholars of Shandong University.

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Li, YY., Li, CY. & Hu, K. Design and development of multi-channel front end electronics based on dual-polarity charge-to-digital converter for SiPM detector applications. NUCL SCI TECH 34, 18 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-023-01168-5

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