Development and Commissioning of the HARDROC based Readout for the INO-ICAL Experiment

TL;DR

This paper reports on the development and initial testing of HARDROC-based readout electronics for the INO-ICAL experiment's RPC detectors, focusing on commissioning and performance evaluation of the ASIC in a neutrino detection setup.

Contribution

It introduces the use of the HARDROC ASIC for multi-channel readout in large-scale RPC detectors for the INO-ICAL experiment, including initial test results and commissioning efforts.

Findings

Successful commissioning of HARDROC ASIC with RPC detectors

First testbench results demonstrating zero suppression capability

Potential suitability of HARDROC for large-scale neutrino detector readout

Abstract

Glass based Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) are going to be used as an active element in the Iron Calorimeter (ICAL) experiment at the India based Neutrino Observatory (INO), which is being constructed to study atmospheric neutrinos. Though the RPC detector operational parameters are more or less finalized, the readout electronics is being developed using various technologies. The ICAL experiment will consist of about 29,000 RPC detectors of 2 m $\times$ 2 m in size with each detector having 64 readout channels both in the X and Y directions. The present study focusses on multi-channel electronics based on SiGe 350 nm technology as an option for the INO-ICAL RPC detectors. The study includes commissioning and usage of frontend application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) HARDROC chip in which 64 channels are handled independently to perform zero suppression. We present first testbench results using the HARDROC chip with the aim to use it finally in the ICAL experiment.