LAB4D: A Low Power, Multi-GSa/s, Transient Digitizer with Sampling Timebase Trimming Capabilities

TL;DR

The LAB4D is a high-speed, low-power ASIC digitizer with enhanced sampling depth, bandwidth, and precise timing capabilities, suitable for ultrahigh energy astrophysics applications.

Contribution

It introduces a 12-bit, 3.2GSa/s ASIC with 4096 samples, integrated ADCs, and sample timebase trimming, representing significant improvements over previous designs.

Findings

Operates at 3.2GSa/s with 4096 samples

Achieves less than 5ps sample-to-sample time variance

Provides nearly deadtime-free readout at kHz rates

Abstract

The LAB4D is a new application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) of the Large Analog Bandwidth Recorder and Digitizer with Ordered Readout (LABRADOR) family, for use in direct wideband radio frequency digitization such as is used in ultrahigh energy neutrino and cosmic ray astrophysics. The LAB4D is a single channel switched-capacitor array (SCA) 12-bit sampler with integrated analog-to-digital converters (ADC), developed in the TSMC 0.25um process. The LAB4D, operating at 3.2GSa/s, contains 4096 total samples arranged in 32 windows, for a total record length of 1280ns. The 3dB bandwidth is approximately 1.3GHz, with a directly-coupled 50ohm input. This represents a factor of 16 increase in the sample depth and an increase in analog bandwidth and sampling depth in comparison to the previous generation LAB3 digitizer. Individually addressable windows allow for sampling and digitization to occur simultaneously, leading to nearly deadtime-free readout for kHz readout rates. All biases and current references are generated via internal digital-to-analog converters (DACs), resulting in a stand-alone digitizer with no additional support circuitry. In addition, the LAB4D contains sample cell timebase trimming capabilities, reducing the intrinsic sample-to-sample time variance to less than 5ps; an improvement of about 80%. This allows the LAB4D to be used in precision timing applications with minimal post-hoc calibration.