Digital Centroid-Finding Electronics for High-Rate Detectors1

Fast centroid-finding electronics are being developed for a range of position-sensitive gas proportional detectors. Each cathode strip feeds a preamplifier, shaper and a free-running ADC. Increased total count rate is achieved by dividing the detector into several segments with parallel processing that introduces no common dead time. Each segment has centralchannel finding logic and event listing realized in a FPGA, followed by a DSP that performs the centroid calculation and histogramming. Measured count-rate per segment exceeds 10 per second, with virtually no dead time.