Design criteria of low-power low-noise charge amplifiers in VLSI bipolar technology

The criteria underlying the design of low-noise front-end integrated electronics for radiation and particle detectors have been determined, taking into account the limits in the allowable power dissipation. The analysis specifically treats integrated amplifiers employing silicon bipolar transistors, whose performance has been studied to highlight the ultimate noise limit and the roles of the front-end device parameters such as the current gain, the base spreading resistance, the junction and diffusion capacitances, the transition frequency, and the device geometry. The relationships existing among the power dissipated in the front-end stage, the noise performance, and the characteristic of signal processing are derived.