Development of a fan-in and delay module for MWDC based on Flash-ADC acquisition scheme

Abstract Background: Multi Wire Drift Chamber(MWDC) array is the tracking detector at Cooling storage ring External-target Experiment(CEE) under design at Heavy Ion Research Facility at Lanzhou-Cooling Storage Ring(HIRFL-CSR). The physical goal of CEE aims at the studies of the equation of state of nuclear matter at low temperature but high baryon density. The MWDC array needs a large amount of front end electronics followed by a scalable data acquisition system, which are all costly. Purpose: The aim is to design a readout scheme which can lower the cost but keep the performance of the array rarely degraded, and to test the system and demonstrate the feasibility of the design. Methods: Based on the Flash Analog-to-Digital Converter(ADC) acquisition scheme, a fan-in and delay module has been designed in order to record three signals from X, U and V sense wires simultaneously in each Flash-ADC channel. Results: By this means the total number of channels for MWDC is reduced by 60%. The performance of this fan-in and delay module is tested with a MWDC detector using ⁵⁵Fe X-ray source. The amplitude signal and the timing signal are smeared by less than 1% and 500 ps, respectively. Conclusion: Both specifications show that the fan-in and delay module can be used in MWDC with the event rate ranging in 1-10kHz. (authors)