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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NUCLEAR SCIENCE, VOL. 53, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2006
The Clear-PEM Electronics System
Edgar Albuquerque, Pedro Bento, Carlos Leong, Fernando Gonçalves, João Nobre, Joel Rego, Paulo Relvas,
Pedro Lousã, Pedro Rodrigues, Isabel C. Teixeira, João P. Teixeira, Luís Silva, M. Medeiros Silva,
Andreia Trindade, and João Varela
Abstract—The Clear-PEM detector system is a compact
positron emission mammography scanner with about 12000
channels aiming at high sensitivity and good spatial resolution.
Front-end, Trigger, and Data Acquisition electronics are crucial
components of this system. The on-detector front-end is implemented as a data-driven synchronous system that identifies and
selects the analog signals whose energy is above a predefined
threshold. The off-detector trigger logic uses digitized front-end
data streams to compute pulse amplitudes and timing. Based on
this information it generates a coincidence trigger signal that is
used to initiate the conditioning and transfer of the relevant data
to the data acquisition computer. To minimize dead-time, the data
acquisition electronics makes extensive use of pipeline processing
structures and derandomizer memories with multievent capacity.
The system operates at 100-MHz clock frequency, and is capable
of sustaining a data acquisition rate of 1 million events per second
with an efficiency above 95%, at a total single photon background
rate of 10 MHz. The basic component of the front-end system
is a low-noise amplifier-multiplexer chip presently under development. The off-detector system is designed around a dual-bus
crate backplane for fast intercommunication between the system
boards. The trigger and data acquisition logic is implemented in
large FPGAs with 4 million gates. Monte Carlo simulation results
evaluating the trigger performance, as well as results of hardware
simulations are presented, showing the correctness of the design
and the implementation approach.
I. INTRODUCTION
REAST cancer is reportedly among the deadliest. Studies
show that one out of every eight women will develop breast
cancer along her lifetime [1]. In 85% to 90% of the cases, the
patient can fully recover, if the cancer is detected in its early
stage. As a consequence, cancer early detection is recognized
worldwide as a priority in health care. However, the detection
sensitivity of present diagnosis systems is low. As an example,
X-ray detection sensitivity is, in the less favorable cases, around
50% [2]. These cases refer to dense breasts, where it is difficult
B
Manuscript received October 20, 2004; revised November 20, 2005. This
work was supported by Innovation Agency (AdI) and Operational Program
for Information Society (POSI), Portugal. The work of P. Rodrigues and
A. Trindade was supported by FCT by Grants SFRH/BD/10187/2002 and
SFRH/BD/10198/2002.
E. Albuquerque, P. Bento, and C. Leong are with INESC-ID, Lisboa, Portugal.
F. Gonçalves, I. C. Teixeira, J. P. Teixeira, and M. Medeiros Silva are with
INESC-ID, Lisboa, Portuga. and also with IST—Instituto Superior Técnico,
Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Portugal.
J. Nobre, J. Rego, P. Relvas, P. Lousã, and L. Silva are with INOV, Lisboa,
Portugal.
P. Rodrigues and A. Trindade are with LIP—Laboratório de Instrumentação e
Física Experimental de Partículas, Lisboa, Portugal (e-mail: Joao.Varela@cern.
ch).
J. Varela is with LIP—Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental
de Partículas, Lisboa, Portugal. He is also with CERN, Geneva, Switzerland and
the IST—Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Portugal.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TNS.2006.881650
to distinguish between the tumor and the normal tissues. Therefore, it is easy to understand that new diagnosis processes and
systems for this type of cancer are the object of heavy research
efforts. One such research line relies on the use of Positron
Emission based technology. This is the case in the development
of the Clear-PEM scanner, a high-resolution Positron Emission
Mammography (PEM) system, capable of detecting tumors with
diameters down to 2 mm [3]. Early stage breast cancer detection can be performed through functional PET imaging, where
a localized increase of metabolic activity in breast tissue may
indicate the presence of a neoplasm before the morphological
changes detectable by standard mammography techniques take
place. Because of the small dimensions of these lesions, a few
millimeters in diameter, a detector system for such application
must have high sensitivity and good spatial resolution.
In this paper, some aspects of the Clear-PEM electronic
system architecture are described. A major challenge of the
work to be carried out is the huge amount of data that must be
processed at the electronic level and sent afterwards to a computer for image reconstruction [5], [6]. An aspect that deserves
serious consideration is the need to keep the examination time
as short as possible. These constraints require the electronic
system to be as efficient and as accurate as possible. To achieve
this purpose, the data acquisition electronics (DAE) makes extensive use of pipeline processing structures and derandomizer
memories with multievent capacity. The system is designed to
sustain a data acquisition rate of 1 million events per second,
with efficiency above 95% for pure photoelectric events, at
a total single photon background rate of 10 MHz. These
parameters have been validated with extensive Monte Carlo
simulations, carried out using different models of the breast
and different examination scenarios as described elsewhere [4].
These studies indicate a single photon rate of the order of 10
MHz in the most unfavorable cases, whereas the coincidences
rates are below 40 kHz. The design value of the maximum data
acquisition rate was chosen so that the same system can be used
in future PET applications with higher rates.
II. CLEAR-PEM DETECTOR SYSTEM
The Clear-PEM detector system for positron emission mammography is being developed by the PEM Consortium within
the framework of the Crystal Clear Collaboration at CERN [4].
It consists of two parallel detector heads each one holding 96
detector modules. Each module is composed of a 2 2 20
mm LYSO:Ce crystal array, optically coupled on each side to
avalanche photodiodes (APDs) to allow depth of interaction
determination [4]. Thus, in total, there are 12 288 readout
channels. Beyond the Clear-PEM detector, the electronic
system functionality is partitioned into front-end electronics,
0018-9499/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE
ALBUQUERQUE et al.: CLEAR-PEM ELECTRONICS SYSTEM
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Fig. 1. Clear-PEM electronics system overview. Front-end electronics planes A and B are connected, respectively, to the top and bottom APDs of the crystal layer
in one PEM Detector Head. Front-end electronics planes C and D have identical connections in the second Detector Head.
Fig. 2. Block diagram of the amplifier and multiplexer chip.
coupled to the detector heads, and off-detector trigger and data
acquisition electronics. These are crucial components in the
Clear-PEM scanner, since the performance of these system
components is decisive to achieve high detection sensitivity
and low acceptance of background noise.
A. System Top-Level Architecture
The higher-level architecture of the PEM system under development is represented in Fig. 1. Four front-end electronic blocks
are responsible for analog signal detection, each one directly
connected to the top (bottom) of one plane of crystals. Amplifiers and analog multiplexer integrated circuits [application specific integrated circuit (ASIC)], and analog-to-digital converters
(ASCs) are the main constituting components in the front-end
blocks. Digital signal cables connect the front-end blocks to the
off-detector electronics, referred to as DAE, which includes the
trigger and data acquisition circuits. Off-detector electronics is
implemented in a standard crate system. After processing, data
is sent to a PC for image reconstruction.
B. Front—End Electronic System
The front-end electronics performs the readout of 6144 crystals, 3072 per detector plate. Each side of the crystal matrix coupled to a 32-pixel Hamamatsu S8550 APD array is connected
to a low noise charge amplifier and multiplexer chip. This chip
performs the readout of one side of six modules (total of 192
channels), amplification, sampling, and storage in analog memories at 100 MHz, and selection of two active channels (192:2
multiplexing) above a common threshold (see Fig. 2). The capability of selecting two channels allows the exploitation of
two-hit Compton events and, therefore, increases the scanner
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sensitivity. The common threshold is set above the noise level
and is the same for all 192 channels on each ASIC.
The chip operates in data-driven synchronous mode, such that
the output samples have fixed latency relative to the input pulse.
This simplifies the front-end circuit with respect to the requirements of a coincidence trigger with good time resolution. No
dedicated trigger signal is generated by the front-end system,
which would require sophisticated discriminators. Instead, the
trigger information is extracted from the main data flow in the
off-detector system. On the other hand, a synchronous design
avoids the need for time tagging of data pulses in the front-end
chip.
Each analog data frame is composed of 10 samples (from
to sample
) and is stored in analog memories.
sample
The first sample above the common threshold is considered as
sample 0, and the amplified pulse has a peaking time of about 30
ns. Therefore, the data frame may contain 2 to 4 presamples. The
presamples are used by the off-detector electronic system for
pedestal estimation and correction, on an event-by-event basis.
If three or more channels are found active in a 100 ns interval,
i.e., two channels are already transmitting two data frames and
a request is made to transmit a third data frame, an error code is
produced indicating that a front-end overflow condition has occurred. The output multiplexing can be a source of inefficiency,
due to pile-up of signal events with background photons. However, because the signal width is 100 ns and the photon background rate per chip is at maximum in the order of 300 kHz [4],
the pile-up probability is kept below 4%.
The analog samples are digitized in the front-end by 10-bit
sampling ADCs running at 100 MHz. The digital data are serialized in low-voltage differential signaling ( LVDS) bit streams
and transmitted to the off-detector system. The transmission
of 10-sample data frames per detector pulse to the trigger and
data acquisition system allows more flexibility in adapting the
trigger algorithms, implemented in programmable logic, to new
requirements.
C. Data Acquisition System
The data acquisition system is implemented in a set of boards
housed in a 6U crate. One generic bus and one dedicated trigger
bus with two channels are used for data exchange. Two types
of electronic boards are used, namely the data acquisition
boards (DAQ boards) performing deserialization, temporary
data storage, and algorithmic processing, and the trigger and
data concentrator board (TGR/DCC Board) that selects events
in coincidence, and interfaces to the data acquisition computer. An event is defined as relevant if it corresponds to the
simultaneous occurrence of hits in both crystal planes. In this
context, simultaneous means within the same discrete time
window. The photon interaction time is determined by a pair of
parameters-time tag/delta. Time tag is the time of occurrence
of the largest sample in the pulse, and delta is the time interval
(phase) between the time tag and the peak of the analog pulse.
In Fig. 3 the top-level model of the data acquisition electronics system is depicted. As can be observed, the system
functionality is implemented using field programmable gate
arrays (FPGAs). The system functionality is distributed among
eight FPGAs that implement the data acquisition (DAQ FPGA)
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NUCLEAR SCIENCE, VOL. 53, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2006
and one FPGA that implements trigger and data concentration
(TRG/DCC FPGA).
Three types of modules can be identified in each DAQ FPGA,
namely, DAQ-four per FPGA, Filter-one per FPGA, and DAQ
read out controller (DAQ ROC)-one per FPGA. Four main
modules can be identified in the TRG/DCC FPGA, namely, the
Trigger module, the TRG/DCC ROC, the DCC , and the DCC
ROC.
The DAQ FPGAs are the first processing elements in the
trigger and data acquisition system. Each FPGA receives digital data frames, each one with 10 samples, from eight front-end
ASICs, corresponding to the one trigger region (one-fourth of a
detector head including top and bottom APDs). The major functions of the DAQ modules are: computation of the amplitude and
time of the digitized detector pulses, validation of crystal hits
matching the top and bottom crystal identifiers, and identification of the occurrence of photoelectric hits in one crystal. The
energy sum of hits in crystals of a trigger region, found within
a programable time window (called Compton window), is also
compared to the event energy threshold.
Specifications include the requirement that the system parameters should be online configurable. These parameters are the
energy thresholds used to identify photoelectric and Compton
hits, the Compton Window, that is, the time interval used to identify the Compton hits that may belong to the same event, and
the Coincidence Window. Another requirement is that the set of
constants used to calibrate crystals, photo sensors, and amplifiers characteristics be online configurable. One subset of these
constants is used to perform energy calibration, and the other
constants are used for time calibration. The equations used for
evaluation of Delta and Energy associated with the photoelectric or Compton events are
(1)
(2)
(3)
In these equations, Sample (3) is the highest energy sample,
(1) is the first sample in the pulse rising edge, and
and
are the presamples of the set.
S are the set of sample values after pedestal subtraction. The
subscript (1,2) indicates whether these samples are associated
with the top or bottom side of the crystal plate. The first equation
normalizes the energy value and also estimates the pedestal and
removes it. Of the two data frames per crystal, that with highest
amplitude is used to compute Delta.
As aforementioned, in order to minimize dead-time the
trigger and data acquisition architecture makes extensive
use of pipeline processing and derandomizer memories with
multi-event capacity. The trigger algorithms are decomposed
into sequences of elementary operations executed in pipeline
ALBUQUERQUE et al.: CLEAR-PEM ELECTRONICS SYSTEM
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Fig. 3. Top-level model of the data acquisition electronics system.
mode. Multiple sequences corresponding to the various input
data streams are processed in parallel.
The main function to be carried out by the DAQ ROC is to
organize and to prepare the data coming from the DAQ modules,
via Filter, to the generic bus. Moreover, the DAQ ROC is used to
load the constant parameters into the DAQ modules. DAQ ROC
receives those parameters from the PC through the PCI Bus. It
also accumulates the number of errors that occur at the DAQ
modules, and sends them to the PC upon user request.
In the Trigger module (TRG/DCC FPGA), a search for twophoton events in true coincidence or random coincidence is performed. For the detection of true coincidence events, the Trigger
compares the Time Tag/Delta of hits in both detector planes and
if the time difference is less than the Coincidence Window the
event is accepted. For the random coincidence a similar procedure is used, in which the time information on one of the hits is
subjected to an adjustable delay. In each case, a trigger signal
occurs and the TRG/DCC board notifies the other boards that
the corresponding data must be processed and sent to the PC
for image processing. A flag written in the event header is used
to distinguish between real and random coincidences. A trigger
on single photon events is also implemented for calibration purposes.
At each trigger, complete data frames (10 digitized samples)
of the identified detector hits are transmitted to the data acquisition PC via a PCI-to-PCI link with a throughput of 400 Mbyte/s.
This allows for the off-line recomputation of the energy and time
of detector hits using more sophisticated algorithms.
The trigger and data acquisition logic is implemented in large
FPGAs with 4 million gates (Xilinx Virtex II), eight FPGAs corresponding to the DAQ modules and a ninth FPGA that implements the Trigger/DCC modules. All FPGA modules where designed and simulated, demonstrating that the required 100–MHz
operation frequency can be achieved. Results are presented in
Section III of this paper. At present, the hardware test of the
FPGAs is being carried out in parallel with the development of
the crate backplane and boards.
D. Modeling and Simulation Framework
The Clear-PEM detector will operate under several imaging
scenarios. Each of these scenarios presents a radiation environment that varies from patient to patient, for different anatomical
regions (breast or axilla) or configurations (standard or frontback). Each of these cases will correspond to different acquisition rates, raw data volumes, and spatial resolutions. Therefore, detailed simulations of the Clear-PEM detector and trigger
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Fig. 5. Two-stage amplifier.
Fig. 4. Overview of the modeling and simulation framework.
system are necessary in order to understand the trigger performance, optimize electronics configuration parameters, and evaluate its impact on the performance of energy, time, and position
reconstruction algorithms. No less important is the capability to
produce realistic data sets that will be used to study the FPGA
design, assess the hardware implementation, and evaluate the
influence of the data acquisition system on the reconstructed
images. For these tasks a simulation framework has been implemented which is partitioned in three functional modules (see
Fig. 4). The two first modules were developed using the Geant4
Monte Carlo simulation toolkit [8]. They include the simulation of radioactive decay and photon tracking in phantoms of
the upper torso and breast (PhantomFactory module), as well as
the detector response (PEMsim module) [4], [6], [7]. The last
application, DIGITsim, is a high-level simulation of the signal
generation and information processing in the front-end and DAE
system.
The first module, PhantomFactory, allows the description
of both mathematical and voxel-type phantoms. Radioisotope
decay is simulated, and the resulting decay products are tracked
through the geometry. Photons that reach a predefined scoring
region are stored for latter tracking. The simulation of the interaction of photons with the Clear-PEM scanner is performed
by the PEMsim module, using data from the PhantomFactory
module. The input to DIGITsim is contained in the data stream
produced by PEMsim, and includes, for each event (photons
that interact with the detector): deposited energy in each crystal,
interaction point, associated time-of-flight, reference tag to the
initial PhantomFactory event, and crystal identification. The
major functional blocks of DIGITsim are (Fig. 4, B1 through
B4):
B1. Production of a transient container, that contains time
slices. The number of time slices is a function of the simulated
radioisotope activity. All events with times belonging to time
slice are grouped into a single mixed event. Each mixed event
is then used as the starting point for the digitization chain.
B2. Translation of the detector hits information (energy, position, and time) into a parameterized pulse shape. Reproduction
of the photodetector and front-end electronics chain (crystals,
APDs, amplifiers, multiplexing, and A/D conversion).
B3. Simulation of trigger logic for each valid data frame.
B4. Simulation of the DCC data stream output.
In order to perform realistic simulations of the detector electronics several functional features were considered: dead-time
due to the analog memory readout cycle (100 ns); either correlated or noncorrelated noise models; control of crystal light
yields, APD pixel, and amplifier gains stored in a MySQL database; storage and retrieval of on-line trigger calibration constants.
III. RESULTS
A. Front-End Amplifier Simulation
The current pulse produced by the APD has a very sharp rise
(2–3 ns) and an exponential decay with a time constant
ns; the pulse peak value
has a maximum value of 0.75 A.
The front-end amplifiers must produce an output voltage pulse
ns, a peak value
V when
with a peaking time
A)
the input current has its maximum amplitude (
and a decay time of about 100 ns.
Two basic approaches are used in front-end amplifiers for radiation detectors: charge-sensitive and voltage-sensitive amplifiers. The first approach has the advantage that the pulse shaping
can be made independent from the circuit parasitics, but, in our
case, a charge-sensitive amplifier cannot produce the required
low peaking and decay times. Thus, a voltage-sensitive amplifier was adopted.
In order to have the required output pulse amplitude the amplifier must have a high gain (of the order of 10 ), and to have
the required peaking time it must have a high bandwidth (above
10 MHz). Thus, a high gain-bandwidth product is required (exceeding 10 GHz), which cannot be obtained with one gain stage.
Thus, a two-stage amplifier must be used.
Different 2-stage amplifier circuits have been considered and
simulated. The best results in terms of stability and noise have
been obtained with the architecture of Fig. 5. The amplifier
and
are simply a NMOS commonblocks with gains
source circuit followed by a NMOS source follower.
ALBUQUERQUE et al.: CLEAR-PEM ELECTRONICS SYSTEM
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Fig. 8. Organization of the DAQ FPGA VHDL test bench.
voltage source). Increasing the width of the input transistor has
a limit, since this leads to increased capacitances and reduced
bandwidth.
Fig. 6. Output voltage pulse for different input charges.
B. DAQ FPGA Unit Tests
Fig. 7. Output voltage peak value as a function of the total input charge, for
input pulses with an exponential time constant = 40 ns.
The amplifier has been designed with the 0.35 m CMOS
technology of AMS designated by C35B4C3. In this technology, there are four metal layers, two low resistivity poly
(polysilicon) layers, and one high-resistivity poly (this is required to realize resistors with high resistance values).
In Fig. 6, we show the simulated output voltage pulse for different amplitudes of the input current corresponding to charges
with values between 3 and 34 fC. In Fig. 7, we represent
as a function of
: the slope is 26.7 mV/fC and there is
up to 1.1 V. The peaking time is
reasonable linearity for
about 30 ns, which satisfies the specifications.
The equivalent noise charge (ENC), obtained by simulation
taking into account the capacitance of the APD (10 pF), is
. Noise reduction is obtained by designing
the amplifier with a wide input transistor (the noise contribution from this transistor is dominant, and it should have a
high transconductance to minimize the equivalent input noise
In this section, the validation tests of the DAQ FPGA design,
implemented in a VHDL [9] test bench (hardware model) and in
DIGITsim are described. The primary objective consists in the
validation of time and energy extraction algorithms since these
constitute the kernel of the digital data stream processing and
provide the primitive information required for the trigger decision by the TRG/DCC board. Results obtained with these two
methods were compared at bit-level, to assess the correctness of
the algorithms implementation.
The following strategy has been followed (Fig. 8): events produced by the PhantomFactor y/PEMsim modules were interfaced with DIGITsim, and a list of digitized data frames was
obtained (two for each hit). Each data frame corresponds to the
information sent by the front-end system (Fig. 4, B2) after the
A/D conversion, and contains 10 samples plus “Monte Carlo
truth” variables energy and phase. These last ones are obtained
at the level of PEMsim and, therefore, do not account for the influence of the electronics system. The same list of samples was
used as stimuli to the VHDL test bench and DIGITsim DAQ
Simulator. For each event, DAQ FPGA VHDL and DIGITsim
values of reconstructed energy and phase where compared with
the “Monte Carlo truth” values.
Table I shows the comparison for a set of 10 single events
(pure photoelectric or two-hit Compton). A perfect agreement
between the two outputs was found. “Monte Carlo truth” energy values were converted from keV to 10-bit integer using the
E [keV]. Energy and phase values
relation: E
calculated with the VHDL and DIGITsim simulation show a
good agreement with the original energy and time, confirming
the suitability of these algorithms for the on-line trigger.
C. Energy and Time Extraction Algorithms
DIGITsim was used to assess the performance of the energy
and time extraction algorithms implemented in the DAQ VHDL
model. Hits between 50 and 511 keV for several amplifier noise
and APD gain scenarios were considered.
Figs. 9 and 10 present single-photon time (FWHM in ns)
and energy (FWHM/Average) resolution. For an amplifier noise
of 950 e ENC and an APD gain of 102, the energy and time
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NUCLEAR SCIENCE, VOL. 53, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2006
TABLE I
COMPARISON OF ENERGY (10-BIT)/PHASE (8-BIT) PAIRS FOR EACH HIT
RECONSTRUCTED BY THE DAQ FPGA VHDL AND DIGITSIM WITH THE
“MONTE CARLO TRUTH” INPUT VALUES
Fig. 11. Ratio simulated over reconstructed energy as a function of the phase
between the highest sample and the peak of the analog pulse.
Fig. 12. Energy resolution for pulses with fixed and random phase relative to
the sampling clock.
Fig. 9. Time resolution as function of deposited energy for four different values
of amplifier noise and APD gain.
Fig. 10. Energy resolution (FWHM/Average) as function of deposited energy.
resolutions for 511 keV are 10% and 470 ps, respectively. For
100 keV, the energy and time resolution are of the order of 36%
and 2 ns.
The energy and single-photon time resolution values include
the photoelectron statistical fluctuation, APD excess noise
factor and electronics noise, but do not include the intrinsic
nonuniformities of the LYSO crystal and the contribution
from the scintillation light statistical noise to the pulse shape.
Fluctuations in the input charge pulse will be responsible for
changes in the amplifier output pulse structure, namely on the
pulse peaking times. This will lead to a degradation of the time
and
paramextraction algorithm (2) response, since
eters are computed assuming a constant peaking time for each
readout channel. The influence of these parameters is under
study and it is estimated to be about 1–1.5 ns single-photon
time resolution at 511 keV. The single-photon time resolution
depends critically on the signal-to-noise ratio, as illustrated in
Fig. 9. An improvement of this parameter may be achieved
by increasing the APD gain. Tests are under way to determine
whether the S8550 APD can be operated safely at a gain of the
order of 100–200.
Figs. 11 and 12 show the effect of the random phase of the
sampling clock relative to the analog pulse in the energy determination. The highest sample, used to estimate the pulse energy,
is larger than 98% of the peak amplitude for all phase values, as
shown in Fig. 11. The energy resolutions for pulses with fixed
and random phase relative to the sampling clock are compared
in Fig. 12, showing a small degradation of the resolution due to
the phase effect.
ALBUQUERQUE et al.: CLEAR-PEM ELECTRONICS SYSTEM
D. DAE System Performance
The simulation was also used to evaluate the efficiency and
purity of the trigger system in various operating conditions.
The efficiency for pure photoelectric coincidence events (one
hit in each crystal plate) was found to be 96% for a threshold
of 150 keV. The efficiency for a data sample that includes
two-hit Compton events is 83%. Purity, defined as the fraction
of events that are badly reconstructed (fakes or ghosts), is 14%.
Ghost events are events with high-multiplicity (more than 3
hits in the same plate, which should be discarded on-line) that
are converted into lower-multiplicity events due to rejection of
low-energy Compton hits by the front-end (below the common
threshold) or DAE system (poor quality time measurement).
This also introduces fake events, in which the reconstructed
event has a different topology from the initial one. For example a two-hit event can be transformed in a fake single-hit
photoelectric event because the low-energy Compton hit was
rejected.
IV. SUMMARY AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
In this paper, an overview of the Clear-PEM electronics
system architecture, as well as the design and implementation
of the analog and digital components of the system were
presented. Simulation results of the front-end chip and DAE
system show that the fundamental requirements in terms of time
resolution and trigger efficiency are fulfilled with the developed
architecture. A DAQ FPGA VHDL model was concluded and
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verified against DIGITsim with a 100% agreement at bit-level
for the outputs of the energy and time extraction algorithms.
The validated model will be used to perform the final hardware
synthesis of the DAQ VHDL in Xilinx Virtex II FPGAs. After
synthesis, the same front-end data will be used to benchmark
and develop a built-in-self-test to be included in the DAQ
FPGAs. Next steps include the validation of the TRG/DCC
VHDL model using as input the DAQ FPGAs DIGITsim output
and the test of the front-end chip.
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