High Speed Analog CMOS Pipeline System for the Recording of Fast Signals from Cherenkov Telescopes

Abstract: Analog sampling systems based on switched capacitor techniques offer performance superior to that of flash A/D converters with respect to cost, density, dynamic range, sampling speed, and power consumption. This paper proposes a 500 MHz switched capacitor analog waveform sampling circuit for the camera electronics of the Cherenkov telescope. An experimental 4 channel analog memory with 128 sampling cells in each channel has been integrated in a 0.8 m CMOS technology with poly-to-poly capacitors. The acquisition time of the analog memory is less than 0.5 ns and the readout sampling rate is 100 kHz. The circuit and chip concept are presented, together with some design optimisations.