Abstract
Abstract
Muon imaging technology has developed rapidly over the past
decades with extensive applications. In many cases, plastic
scintillator detectors are preferred because of their high cost
performance, ease of processing and robustness in harsh
environments. To reduce imaging time and improve imaging quality,
detectors tend to have large areas and high position
resolutions. The challenge to the electronics for such detectors is
to maintain the scale of electronics acceptable while improving the
high position resolution of the detector. In this paper, the basic
detector unit is a triangular strip of plastic scintillator, each
embedded with two wavelength-shifting (WLS) fibers read out by the
silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). Since the hit position of muon on
the detector is determined by the splitting ratio of the
scintillation light on two adjacent scintillator strips, it is
necessary the readout electronics has high linearity and low
noise. The possibility of the electronics channel multiplexing on
the same detector plane is fully explored so that four WLS fibers
can be read out by one SiPM realizing 2:1 readout channel
compression. Furthermore, since multiple electronics modules are
connected by a daisy chain structure, the electronics system is very
scalable with its data acquisition system (DAQ) independent of
detector size. In addition to detailing the position encoding
readout scheme, the design of electronics module and the DAQ system,
the electronics system has been implemented and applied to a
prototype detector for performance evaluation. Using scintillator
strips with 11 mm pitch size, the position resolution of the
detector reaches 1.49 mm, which demonstrates that the designed
electronics is suitable for the new detector structure, and the
combination of the two has a good application prospect in muon
imaging.