Speaker
Description
AMBER (NA66) is a fixed-target experiment at M2 beam line of the SPS at CERN, devoted to various fundamental QCD measurements. Several major upgrades of the spectrometer are planned for the medium and long-term AMBER program. Within the upgrade program we are designing together with the CERN MPT workshop 1x0.5 m^2 bulk resistive MICRO-MEsh GAseous Structure (MM) detectors and in parallel a closely tailored to their specification new custom 64 channel fully digital front-end ASIC ToRA (Torino Readout for AMBER) for timing and energy measurements is designed at INFN sez. Torino. This simultaneous design aims for a good optimisation of their common performance. The challenge is coming from the resistive bulk MM with 1.0-2.5 fC signals at the low end of the charge amplitudes together with ~1.2 m long strips of up to ~250 pF capacitance. To face these conditions, we need a good control over the system noise and signal integrity performance of the detector itself together with the full signal path to the ASIC and proper ASICs integration. We present digital and real models of the detector and signal path elements used to match the simulation with real measurements of circuit properties and signal integrity. Considerations on the impact of signal integrity studies will be given. The architecture of the ToRA v1 ASIC will be presented in the context of this optimisation work with some indications towards a ToRA v2 study.
