A high-resolution, multi-stop, time-to-digital converter for nuclear time-of-flight measurements

✍ Scribed by D.F. Spencer; J. Cole; M. Drigert; R. Aryaeinejad

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 296 KB
• Volume: 556
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0168-9002
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nima.2005.10.008

✦ Synopsis

A high-resolution, multi-stop, time-to-digital converter (TDC) was designed and developed to precisely measure the times-of-flight (TOF) of incident neutrons responsible for induced fission and capture reactions on actinide targets. The minimum time resolution is 71 ns. The TDC design was implemented into a single, dual-wide CAMAC module. The CAMAC bus is used for command and control as well as an alternative data output. A high-speed ECL interface, compatible with LeCroy FERA modules, was also provided for the principle data output path. An Actel high-speed field programmable gate array (FPGA) chip was incorporated with an external oscillator and an internal multiple clock phasing system. This device implemented the majority of the high-speed register functions, the state machine for the FERA interface, and the high-speed counting circuit used for the TDC conversion. An external microcontroller was used to monitor and control system-level changes. In this work we discuss the performance of this TDC module as well as its application.