A time digitizer for the microstrip detectors of the PANDA MVD

In nuclear detectors the information on the energy of the particle is usually obtained by measuring the amplitude of the signal delivered by the sensor. The low voltage power supply used in modern deep submicron technologies constrain the maximum dynamic range of the ADC. Still, the energy information can be obtained with time-based techniques, in which the energy is associated with the duration of the signal through the Time over Threshold method. This work is focused on the PANDA Micro Vertex Detector and explores the possibility of applying a time-based readout approach for the microstrip sensors. In PANDA, the strip system must cope with hit rates up to 50 kHz per channel. Therefore, the front-end output must be relatively short, this implies that the clock resolution is not enough to measure the signal duration, so it is necessary to use a Time to Digital Converter. The front-end and the TDC structure are designed in a 0.11μm CMOS process. The TDC chosen is based on an analog clock interpolator because it combines good time resolution with a fairly simple implementation and low power consumption. In the presentation an overview of the analog part of the PASTA (PANDA strip ASIC) is presented.