TY - JOUR
T1 - A SIPM PHOTON-COUNTING READOUT SYSTEM FOR ULTRA-FAST ASTRONOMY
AU - Lau, Albert Wai Kit
AU - Chan, Yan Yan
AU - Shafiee, Mehdi
AU - Smoot, George F.
AU - Grossan, Bruce
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, National University of Ireland Maynooth. All rights reserved.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Very little work has been done searching for astrophysical transient optical emission in the millisec-ond to nanosecond regime with significant sensitivity. We call this regime “Ultra-Fast Astronomy”, or UFA. To investigate transients on as short time scales as possible, we developed our own customized readout system for a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM)-based UFA camera, intended for use on conventional astronomical telescopes. SiPMs, available in array packages for imaging a field, are capable of time-tagged single-photon detection in the visible wavelength range. Our readout system consists of 16 channels of 14-bit data logging. Each channel includes a 50-dB gain pre-amplifier, signal shap-ing circuits, an analogue front end, an analogue to digital converter, and a Xilinx UltraScale+ Field Programable Gate Array Multipurpose System on Chip (FPGA-MPSoC) board for data-logging. We show that our system successfully read out the data from SiPM at 16 ns intervals with a maximum power consumption of 300 mW per channel and capability to perform concurrent 16 channels readout.
AB - Very little work has been done searching for astrophysical transient optical emission in the millisec-ond to nanosecond regime with significant sensitivity. We call this regime “Ultra-Fast Astronomy”, or UFA. To investigate transients on as short time scales as possible, we developed our own customized readout system for a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM)-based UFA camera, intended for use on conventional astronomical telescopes. SiPMs, available in array packages for imaging a field, are capable of time-tagged single-photon detection in the visible wavelength range. Our readout system consists of 16 channels of 14-bit data logging. Each channel includes a 50-dB gain pre-amplifier, signal shap-ing circuits, an analogue front end, an analogue to digital converter, and a Xilinx UltraScale+ Field Programable Gate Array Multipurpose System on Chip (FPGA-MPSoC) board for data-logging. We show that our system successfully read out the data from SiPM at 16 ns intervals with a maximum power consumption of 300 mW per channel and capability to perform concurrent 16 channels readout.
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U2 - 10.21105/astro.2108.07526
DO - 10.21105/astro.2108.07526
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85187427767
SN - 2565-6120
VL - 5
JO - Open Journal of Astrophysics
JF - Open Journal of Astrophysics
ER -