Readout electronics for nuclear applications (RENA) chip

A Readout Electronics for Nuclear Applications (RENA) Chip has been developed to read out position sensitive solid state detectors for the nuclear instruments. This chip can also be used for medical and industrial imaging of X-rays and gamma rays. It is a multi channel monolithic mixed signal application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chip. The RENA chip has 32 channels with low noise charge sensitive amplifier inputs. It works in pulse counting mode with good energy resolution. It also has a self triggering output which is essential for nuclear applications when the incident radiation arrive at random. Different, externally selectable, operational modes that includes a sparse readout mode is available to increase data throughput. The design of the chip and the results of tests done on a full scale prototype chip will be presented.