Development of fully FPGA-based 3D (X, Y, t) detection systems using multi-channel Tapped-Delay-Line Time-to-Digital Converter with Cross Delay-Line detectors

Time-resolved experiments often need detection devices able to provide information about position and arrival time of each detected event. Time resolution is a fundamental requirement for these devices, along with the high versatility and fast real-time computing of the acquisition system. Typical architectures, based on Time-to-Digital Converters (TDC) followed by a FPGA, combine very fast parallel computing with a time precision better than hundreds of picoseconds, allowing to perform state-of-the-art time-resolved experiments. Nevertheless, time resolution is still a limiting factor, in particular for imaging applications where the detector spatial resolution is determined through time measurement. Furthermore, the separation between the TDC devices and a readout FPGA has some drawbacks in terms of versatility of the system. In this article, we present a new approach, combining FPGA-based multi-channel Tapped-Delay-Line TDC and an efficient multipurpose readout logic, to greatly improve the overall performance and versatility of Cross Delay-Line (CDL) detector systems.