Read-out electronics for digital silicon photomultiplier modules

A new kind of a PET-Scanner (PET = positron emission tomography) for plant research is developed asa joint project of the Forschungszentrum Jülich and Philips Digital Photon Counting (PDPC). Thisscanner will utilize digital silicon photomultiplier (dSiPM) for plant phenotyping for the very first time.The goal of this work is to get a further knowledge of the operation of digital silicon photomultiplier.On this account a test-facility for this new photo detectors has been installed at the central instituteof engineering, electronics and analytics (ZEA-2 electronic systems) to determine the usage of thissensors, having regard to use them as scintillation detectors in a PET-Scanner later on.This work has its focus on the development of a fast read-out electronic for the used photo sensorsDPC3200-22-44. As there will be high data rates a fast USB 3.0 interface has been used. All thenecessary processing and data handling has been implemented in a state of the art FPGA

phenoPET: A dedicated PET Scanner for Plant Research based on digital SiPMs

In the frame of the German Plant Phenotyping Project (DPPN) we developed a novel PET scanner. In contrary to a clinical or preclinical PET scanner the detector rings of the Plant System are oriented in a horizontal plane. The final system will be equipped with three rings covering a Field of View (FOV) of 18 cm diameter and 20 cm axial height. One detector ring is formed by 12 modules. Each module contains four 8×8 pixel digital SiPM devices DPC-3200-22-44 (Philips Digital Photon Counting) connected to a PCB and four scintillator matrices with 16×16 individual LYSO scintillators. Crystal size is 1.85×1.85×10 mm3. The matrices are composed with both reflective and transparent contact faces between the crystals in order to optimize crystal identification. A cooling system keeps the detectors below 5°C and limits the dark count rate. Data are already preprocessed by the Cyclone FPGA (Altera) in the module and transmitted from there at 50MiB/s to the base board. The base board collects the data from all modules and allows coincidence detection performed on a Kintex-7 FPGA (Xilinx). Finally the data link to the computer system for image reconstruction is realized via an USB 3.0 connection. Due to the fast photodetectors the system is dedicated to work with rather high activities. Preliminary measurements showed a coincidence peak of 250 ps FWHM between two detector elements and an energy resolution ΔE/E = 12%. This paper will present first results from a one ring system with a FOV of 18 cm diameter and 6.5 cm axial height

Entwicklung einer FPGA basierten Ansteuerungselektronik für Justageeinheiten im Michelson Interferometer

Within the GLORIA-AB-project ($\underline{Glo}$bal $\underline{R}$adiance Limb $\underline{I}$mager Experiment for the $\underline{A}$tmosphere) a spectral high resolution spatial imaging instrument for the atmosphere is developed as a joint proposal of the Forschungszentrum Jülich and the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. Crucial atmospheric parameters as temperatures, content of water vapour, content of ozone, and some chlorofluorocarbons, aerosols and clouds will be measured with a high limb resolution. In that matter a 2D infrared detector array will be coupled to a cryogenic Michelson interferometer for the very first time in atmospheric research. To be able to accomplish corrections of the optical path and focusing the field of view, adjustment units have to be placed inside the Michelson interferometer. Adjustment of the optical path will be attained by cube corners which can be moved in two directions. A designated actuator which can be controlled by a stepper motor drive and being analyzed by a magnetic absolute rotary encoder will be implemented for focusing the IR-object lens. This thesis is done in matter of a graduation degree in electrical engineering and focuses the development of an electronic control for piezoelectric drives and stepper motors. The electrical components where designed for the cryogenic usage and with regard to a following integration inside the instrument. The required control units are being implemented in the existing FPGA of the readout electronics

Design Concept of a FPGA based DAQ for digital SiPMs using USB 3.0

The presentation will show a concept of a read-out system for Philips digital SiPM's. It utilizes a Spartan 6 FPGA to connect and to transfer data from these photon counting device. A USB 3.0 interface is used as a high-speed link of up to 5 Gbit/s to transfer the sensor data to a PC

Temperature dependency of digital SiPMs

During the last years a new device for photon detection has been developed by Philips Digital Photon Counting, combining Silicon-PMT techniques with integrated logic, to get a fully digital photo sensor (dSiPM). An Evaluation Kit for dSiPMs has been installed at the Central Institute for Electronics at the Forschungszentrum Jülich. First measurements show, that the chip temperature is a factor that has to be controlled by the operator, since the higher integrated electronics on the die heat up the sensor. In this work, we present our first results focusing the influence of the temperature on the digital SiPMs. A test setup with a high power Peltier element has been set up to cool down the sensor device below -10°C. Several measurements have been done with the dSiPM evaluation kit to show the behaviour of the breakdown-voltage and the dark count rate under different temperature conditions

Temperature dependency of digital SiPM‘s

During the last years a new device for photon detection has been developed by Philips Digital Photon Counting, combining Silicon-PMT techniques with integrated logic, to get a fully digital photo sensor (dSiPM). An Evaluation Kit for dSiPMs has been installed at the Central Institute for Electronics at the Forschungszentrum Jülich. First measurements show, that the chip temperature is a factor that has to be controlled by the operator, since the higher integrated electronics on the die heat up the sensor. In this work, we present our first results focusing the influence of the temperature on the digital SiPMs. A test setup with a high power Peltier element has been set up to cool down the sensor device below -10°C. Several measurements have been done with the dSiPM evaluation kit to show the behaviour of the breakdown-voltage and the dark count rate under different temperature conditions

The Use of USB 3.0 for Fast Data Transfer in a Plant PET Detector

The Research Centre Juelich is developing a PET detector for plant phenotyping together with Philips Digital PhotonCounting, Aachen. The scientific goal is to study the carbon transport in plants. The poster will give an overview overthe whole project, but will focus on the use of USB 3.0 to transfer data from the FPGA to the acquisition computer. Todetect the photon pairs we use a ring of digital photon counters recently developed by Philips.For the prototype we decided to use a Xilinx Kintex evaluation board for data concentration and processing of thecoincidences. It is assumed that the necessary data rate from the FPGA to the acquisition computer is about 300MByte/s. As data link a 10-gigabit Ethernet link would be preferred, but the evaluation board contains a USB 3.0interface already, therefore we chose to use this one in order to reduce the development costs. The poster will discussthe pros and cons of the use of USB for data acquisition and the results achieved so far

SiPM-based Scintillator Detectors for Small Angle Neutron Scattering Experiments

Small Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) technique uses cold or thermal neutrons for investigation of soft and condensed matter. Significant developments in microelectronics enabled scintillation-based pixelated neutron detectors that use Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM) for detecting the visible light generated within a scintillator. We characterized three different SiPM technologies in terms of their radiation hardness. The results of this first study are presented together with the first preliminary characterization results obtained in a beam of cold neutrons of a demonstrator consisting of a 1 mm thick Ce doped 6Li-glass optically coupled to an 8 × 8 pixel Philips DPC module