Picosecond Timing Measurement IC for Particle Physics Experiments*

Alphacore is developing a low-cost, single-chip multi-channel detector readout digitizer ASIC for high energy physics (HEP) experiments. This ASIC meets the critical need existing in several existing or planned HEP experiments for a high-performance, low-cost readout solution with picosecond timing measurement capability. Several HEP experiments require accurate timing measurements and transient digitization at high sampling rates, equaling or exceeding 5 GSPS.

Alphacore's versatile ROIC is a solution for detectors that have fast pulse rise times (200ps – 1ns). The novel architecture is “as digital as possible”, i.e., it takes advantage of the advanced digital circuit performance (higher data bandwidths and clock rates at lower power and smaller area) of the newest CMOS generations. Alphacore’s innovation is a low-power gigasample-range ADC that has both “continuous ADC” and “buffered waveform digitizer” functions.

• Continuous ADC mode: no latency, no deadtime or buffer lengt limitations, power dissipation is ~30mW per channel, high-speed interface to FPGAs
• Buffered waveform digitizer mode:1,024 samples per channel, readout at a lower rate,  average power <1 mW per channel