A high dynamic micro strips ionization chamber featuring embedded multi DSP processing

An X-ray detector will be presented that is the combination of a segmented ionization chamber featuring one-dimensional spatial resolution integrated with an intelligent ADC front-end, multi DSP processing and embedded PC platform. This detector is optimized to fan beam geometry with an active area of 192 mm (horizontal) and a vertical acceptance of 6 mm. Spatial resolution is obtained by subdividing the anode into readout strips, having pitch of 150 micrometers, which are connected to 20 custom made integrating VLSI chips (each capable of 64-channel read-out and multiplexing) and read out by 14 bits 10 MHz ADCs and fast adaptive PGAs into DSP boards. A bandwidth reaching 3.2Gbit/s of raw data, generated from the real time sampling of the 1280 micro strips, is cascaded processed with FPGA and DSP to allow data compression resulting in several days of uninterrupted acquisition capability. Fast acquisition rates reaching 10 kHz are allowed due to the MicroCAT structure utilized not only as a shielding grid in ionization chamber mode but also to provide active electron amplification in the gas.