A Radiation-Hard 8-Channel 15-Bit 40-MSPS ADC for the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter Readout
The custom design of a radiation-hardened, 8-channel, 40-MSPS, 15-bit resolution, 14.2-bit dynamic range, 11.4-ENOB ADC data acquisition ASIC fabricated in a commercial 65 nm triple-well CMOS technology is presented. The ADC is developed for and integrates seamlessly into the readout system for the ATLAS liquid argon (LAr) calorimeter in the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) upgrade at CERN, which will require a total of 364,936 ADC channels. A three-stage MDAC+SAR pipelined ADC architecture was designed to meet the physics requirements and scientific goals of the ATLAS experiment. The ADC is a fully self-contained data acquisition system that includes foreground calibration, digital data processing, digital control, and supporting circuitry. The measured performance shows the ADC achieves a competitive dynamic range and SNDR, and it meets or exceeds the ATLAS analog requirements. Radiation tolerance and scalability design considerations were implemented at the device-, circuit-, and system-level. Radiation-hardening-by-design techniques used include redundancy for digital circuits, use of MiM capacitors, and a hybrid RC-DAC for the ADC core. The ADC ASIC was demonstrated to be robust against the effects of the intense radiation expected in the HL-LHC experimental environment.
Authors
- Subhajit Ray (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1611-3419)
- Alan Kahn (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1605-4172)
- J. Bán (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1961-8420)
- Michael Unanian
- Peter R. Kinget (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5707-6394)
- Lauren Larson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7391-3869)
- Xiangxing Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8712-2884)
- Chen-Kai Hsu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5155-8405)
- K. E. Kennedy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3264-548X)
- J. L. Gonski (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2037-6315)
- Rui Xu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6658-5716)
- J. A. Parsons (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9470-6017)
- Michael Himmelsbach
- Nan Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5536-8385)
- Sarthak Kalani (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8801-659X)
- T. Andeen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4413-871X)
- D. K. Panchal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5732-9948)
- D. M. Williams (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5646-1856)
- Brian Kirby (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9432-8880)
- Gabriel Matos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4803-0167)
- M. Contreras Cossio (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-5728-7209)
- Andrew Caldon Smith (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2488-407X)
Institutions
- Columbia University (US)
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- IEEE Open Journal of the Solid-State Circuits Society
- Published
- 2025-01-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1109/ojsscs.2025.3573904
- Primary Topic
- Particle Detector Development and Performance
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy