Fully Programmable System for Multi-Channel Experiments Targeting to Time Measurement at High Performance

In this contribution, we introduce a new hardware/firmware/software bundle for experiments in which high-performance time resolving is a primary request. Main features of the global system are multi-channel operation up to 16 parallel measures with resolution of 250fs and precision below 12ps r.m.s. with hardware full-scale-range of 10.3s, and the possibility of enabling different time tagging techniques that can indefinitely extend the full-scale-range via software. Moreover, each channel can support multi-hit measurements with a maximum rate of 20MHz. Time measurements are performed by a multi-channel, highperformance Tapped Delay-Line Time-to-Digital Converter instantiated as HDL IP-Core Module (TDC IP-Core) in a Serie-7 28nm Xilinx FPGA module hosted on a custom hardware. The firmware and the software are modularly structured, meaning that each module has firmware and software images that split the processing in parallel and temporal computing segments.