Development of a new high-speed readout system for SOI pixel detectors

• Published in: Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment Vol. 924; pp. 480 - 484
• Main Authors: Nishimura, Ryutaro, Arai, Yasuo, Miyoshi, Toshinobu, Hirano, Keiichi, Kishimoto, Shunji, Hashimoto, Ryo, Lu, Yunpeng, Song, Longlong, Ouyang, Qun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 21.04.2019
• Subjects: DAQ; FPGA; Pixel detector; SOI; X-ray imaging; Pixel detector; SOI; DAQ; FPGA; X-ray imaging
• ISSN: 0168-9002; 1872-9576
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nima.2018.09.120

We are developing a new high-speed readout system for silicon on insulator (SOI) pixel detectors. The SOI detector is a monolithic radiation imaging detector based on a 0.2 μm FD-SOI CMOS process. Previously, we used a Xilinx Virtex-4/5 FPGA readout board for the SOI detector and developed many facilities for this board. However, the Virtex-4/5 FPGA is now obsolete and does not have sufficiently high performance for recent experiments that require more than 1-kHz high-speed imaging with a large number of pixels. Thus, we started to develop a new high-speed readout system using the KC705, which is the evaluation board for the Xilinx Kintex-7 FPGA. We developed a new data acquisition structure that has backward compatibility with the previous environment on this board and implements several functions for practical purposes such as micro Computed Tomography. The transfer speed achieved by the new system is 95.3 fps for a 426k pixel detector in continuous data-taking mode, and 762.5 fps in maximum-speed mode. The details of the new readout system are presented. •New high-speed DAQ system using the KC705 for SOIPIX detectors is under development.•New DAQ system keeps backward compatibility with SEABAS2 current DAQ system.•New DAQ system is using new FPGA and DDR3 memory to increase the performance.•Transfer speed is 95.3 fps for a 426k pixel detector, in continuous data-taking mode.•Transfer speed is 762.5 fps for a 426k pixel detector, in maximum-speed mode.