Digital centroid-finding electronics for high-rate detectors

Fast centroid-finding electronics are being developed for a range of position-sensitive gas proportional detectors. Each cathode strip feeds a preamplifier, shaper and a free-running ADC. Increased total count rate is achieved by dividing the detector into several segments with parallel processing that introduces no common dead time. Each segment has central-channel finding logic and event listing realized in a FPGA, followed by a DSP that performs the centroid calculation and histogramming. Measured count-rate per segment exceeds 10/sup 6/ per second, with virtually no dead time.