2023/10/03 by Federica Bradascio, F. Brun, Bradascio, Federica +27
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Particle Detector Development and Performance #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2310.02155
openalex publication_date 2023/10/03 · openalex created_date 2023/10/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The Front-End Board (FEB) is a key component of the NectarCAM camera, which has been developed for the Medium-Sized-Telescopes (MST) of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO). The FEB is responsible for reading and converting the signals from the camera's photo-multiplier tubes (PMTs) into digital data, as well as generating module level trigger signals. This contribution provides an overview of the design and performances of a new version of the FEB that utilizes an improved version of the NECTAr chip. The NECTAr chip includes a switched capacitor array for sampling signals at 1 GHz, and a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for digitizing each sample when the trigger signal is received. The integration of this advanced NECTAr chip significantly reduces the deadtime of NectarCAM by an order of magnitude as compared to the previous version. This contribution also presents the results of laboratory testing of the new FEB, including measurements of timing performance, linearity, dynamic range, and deadtime.