ACC Readout Electronics

Signals from the FMPMT's are processed using the signal chain shown in Fig. . The system comprises three main elements: i) low-noise preamplifiers mounted directly on the FMPMT bases, ii) specially designed charge-to-time converter boards, and iii) LeCroy Model 1877 pipeline TDCs. The time-to-converter approach makes efficient use of the data acquisition system by combining both pulse height and timing information into a single channel. Moreover, the pipelined nature of the TDC eliminates the need for the bulky delay cables found in traditional gated-integrator data acquisition schemes.

Figure: System-level block diagram of the ACC readout electronics.