Alberto Quaranta, Marco Maggiora, Angelo Rivetti
In High-Energy physics applications, electronic devices will experience ever-increasing radiation doses. The forthcoming increase of the luminosity of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will require electronics to be able to withstand ultrahigh total ionizing dose (TID) levels up to 1 Grad(SiO2). For this reason, research on the TID response of modern technologies at ultrahigh doses has...
In recent years, lunar and Martian exploration have become more attractive to industries, with the prospect of a full-fledged lunar economy. Artemis and Mars sample return flagship missions are among the most significant, and the roadmap aims to define and design all the infrastructure needed for manned missions. To make this a reality, there is a strong need for robotic equipment (drills,...
In future high-luminosity colliders, vertex detectors must withstand radiation levels of 6×10^16 neq/cm2 and a total ionization dose around 10 MGy on SiO2, while delivering an output bandwidth of approximately 100 Gbit/s per ASIC. To increase the active sensing area, these detectors will feature a three-dimensional design with Through Silicon Vias (TSVs) linking the frontend chip and an active...
Several next-generation experiments will use SiPMs cooled to very low temperatures. The DUNE experiment will use large arrays of SiPMs to detect scintillation light produced in liquid argon (90 K) by neutrino interactions. Each channel will require single photon sensitivity with a total photosensitive area of tens of cm$^2$, read out with a single amplifier. Due to the low source impedance,...
"The IXPE mission, featuring three x-ray telescopes with
polarization-sensitive Gas Pixel Detectors (GPD), aims to explore the
properties of cosmic x-ray sources in the 2 to 8 keV energy range. The
GPD and the readout electronics, developed at INFN, play a pivotal role
in capturing and processing the polarization data, which are central to
the mission's scientific objectives. We will...
The LITE-SLPD (Lightweight Integrated Technology for Luminescence and Particle Detection) project explores the integration of advanced detection electronics within compact and low-power systems. As part of this effort, the GEN4 system introduces a fully integrated ASIC-based analog front-end for SiPM-based particle detection.
The ASIC chip, a key element of the GEN4 system, integrates core...
The growing demand for ever-larger datasets is a clear trend across nearly all areas of experimental physics. While computing power is essential for the processing farm responsible for handling these datasets, inefficient data movement can significantly undermine its effectiveness. Traditional networking stacks, responsible for managing network traffic, typically handle data via multiple...
The APE Router, developed by the INFN APE group, allows to implement a direct network for FPGA accelerators, enabling low-latency data transfer. This IP can be configured at design time for different environments, making it adaptable for applications ranging from embedded systems to large-scale HPC clusters and distributed FPGA-based systems.
Various applications will be presented,...
The Artificial Retina is a computing architecture conceived for track reconstruction, particularly suitable for implementation on FPGAs. Its high throughput and low latency allow to integrate it into the readout of the DAQ system of a HEP experiment. The reconstructed tracks can be incorporated in the raw data as outputs from a virtual sub-detector.
After a decade of R&D, started with the...
The AMD Versal™ adaptive SoCs combine programmable logic (PL), processing system (PS), and AI Engines with leading-edge memory and interfacing technologies to deliver powerful heterogeneous acceleration for any application. The hardware and software are targeted for programming and optimization by data scientists and software and hardware developers. A host of tools, software, libraries, IP,...
The increase of the luminosity in the upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN required the complete redesign of the Front-End electronics in most of the detectors of all the experiments. The first challenge was the increase of the data rates due to higher trigger rate and to the need of data from the Silicon Trackers for the generation of the level 1 trigger. The second challenge was the...
In this contribution, a comprehensive overview of the development of FDMAPS in 110 nm CIS technology under the ARCADIA project will be presented.
After discussing the main activities and goals of the project, the design and characterization of sensors will be detailed, with special emphasis on three key points: (i) the Main Demonstrator, a 25-μm-pitch pixel array detector; (ii) the strip and...
High-Intensity 4D-tracking requires to match challenging requirements both in sensors and electronics development. The IGNITE project develops technical solutions for the next generation of trackers at colliders, planning to implement an integrated module, comprising sensor, electronics, and fast readout. System pixels are required to have pitch around 50 µm and time resolution below 30...
In a simplified view, the temporal resolution in LGAD can be considered the sum of two components: the jitter, linked to the electronics noise, and the Landau noise, related to non-uniform ionization. This contribution reviews how signal formation, charge drifts, and gain saturation determine the value of the Landau noise and impact the achievable time resolution. Implementing the above...
The stringent requirements for high-resolution Time-of-Flight detector layers in the HL-LHC experiments currently under design present significant detector development challenges. Achieving precise time resolution while balancing constraints on power consumption, material budget, fabrication, and assembly costs requires careful engineering trade-offs. Monolithic solutions offer a promising...
We present the development of a configurable data acquisition (DAQ) system for detectors integrating either the Timepix4 or Medipix4 ASIC as a front-end. These CMOS ASICs, developed by the CERN Medipix Collaboration, are designed for hybrid pixel detectors used in medical imaging and particle physics applications.
Our system is fully customizable, built on commercial hardware, and leverages...
The dual-radiator RICH (dRICH) detector of the ePIC experiment at the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will use SiPMs for detecting Cherenkov light. The photodetector will cover a surface of ~3 m² with 3x3 mm² SiPMs, for a total of more than 300k channels to readout and will be the first application of SiPMs with single-photon detection in a high energy physics experiment.
We focus on the...
The ASPIDES and ADA_5D projects, which deal with entirely different applications, calorimetry for particle physics on the one hand and cosmic ray atomic species identification in space-borne experiments on the other, rely upon two different approaches to tackle a shared problem: the need to process signals covering a large dynamic range.
ASPIDES aims at establishing a technology platform...
Recent generations of ASICs developed at Polimi for medical imaging applications will be presented. ASICs for SiPMs readout of monolithic scintillators allow spectroscopy and position of interaction measurements of gamma-rays, also within a large dynamic range thanks to an active gain control mechanism in the analog channel. Such ASICs are applied, in particular, in prompt-gamma measurements...
Superconducting qubits are among the most promising platforms for quantum computing and quantum sensing, requiring advanced electronic systems for their control and readout. These systems must generate high-fidelity microwave pulses, ensure low-noise amplification, and enable fast, high-precision measurements. The control system relies on arbitrary waveform generators (AWGs) and microwave...
Superconducting quantum bits, or qubits, are among the most promising technologies for the realization of fully-functioning quantum computers, and their possible applications, ranging from quantum simulations to quantum sensing and particle detection, make these devices a potentially interesting tool also for particle physics experiments.
A fundamental step in the research on this field has...
Quantum imaging is an emerging field that leverages the principles of quantum mechanics to achieve imaging capabilities beyond classical limits. By exploiting entangled photon, quantum imaging techniques enable enhanced resolution, improved sensitivity, and novel imaging modalities such as super-resolution, ghost imaging, sub-shot-noise imaging. These approaches hold significant promise for...
Random Power is an innovation project turned into a start-up company, developing a platform of random bit streamers based on quantum tunneling in Silicon Devices. The patent protected principle has been implemented in a series of boards and in an ASIC, currently in its final assessment phase. The basic building blocks to make it compliant to the FIPS-140-3 certification protocol, together with...
Future gravitational wave detectors will require increasingly sophisticated control systems to enhance sensitivity and expand operational range. A key challenge is optimizing the entire data acquisition and processing loop, from ADC conversion to real-time elaboration and DAC actuation, where low, deterministic latency is essential for improving overall system performance and extending control...
Memristors, first theorized by Leon Chua in 1971 as the fourth fundamental circuit element, were experimentally realized in 2008 by researchers at HP Labs. Since then, significant progress has been made in the development of memristive devices, unlocking new opportunities for energy-efficient computing and high-density memory storage. While companies such as Knowm focus on research-driven...
Keywords: Neuromorphic-Computing, spiking neural network, computational neuroscience, HPC, Edge Computing
Brain-inspired Spiking Neural Networks represent a promising frontier in computational models, offering potential advantages over traditional computing paradigms in terms of energy efficiency, temporal information processing, and adaptability to dynamic data. This can benefit numerous...
Time-to-Digital Converters (TDCs) are key components in many physics experiments, particularly those requiring precise time measurements. In this work, we present an efficient and scalable TDC design embedded in an AMD Artix-7 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The TDC is tailored to meet the specific demands of high-performance physics experiments, operating with a resolution of 75ps and a...
The ToASt ASIC is a 64-channel integrated circuit developed for the readout of the silicon strip detector that will be placed in the Micro-Vertex of the PANDA experiment. ToASt is implemented in a commercial 110 nm CMOS technology and can provide information on the position, time, and deposited energy of the particle passing through the detector. Its time resolution is given by its 160 MHz...
The Cleopatra ASIC is a 12-channel prototype designed within the HASPIDE project for the readout of hydrogenated amorphous silicon sensors in real-time dosimetry for radiation diagnostic and therapy.
In particular, IORT and FLASH radiotherapy use high particle fluxes and require a high dynamic input range.
The analog front-end is a current-to-frequency converter based on the recycling...
The Beam Dump eXperiment at Jefferson Lab plans to acquire Light Dark Matter data in streaming mode. With this new triggerless acquisition mode each front-end send all the data throws the net and the net must be manage “n” times the data rate of the single one and became very fast the bottleneck for SRO systems. In addition, this experiment needs also the waveform of each events available for...
The "all in fiber" phase noise cancellation loop demonstrator designed as a possible candidate for reducing the phase noise of the Virgo squeezer makes use of a benchtop analog RF generator with external frequency modulation command. Substitution of such a bulky instrument with a direct digital synthesizer (DDS) is under investigation, with the aim of improving system integration and...
With the rise of Artificial Intelligence came also an ever increasing need to compute specialized tasks better, faster and more. To tackle the challenges that arise with this new type of workload, AMD Xilinx proposes the Versal Adaptive Computing Accelerating Platform (ACAP). A new accelerator module has been introduced, a 2D array of 400 tiles, the AI Engine, which moves away from the Von...
The Advanced Camera (AdvCam) for the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory’s Large-Sized Telescope (CTAO-LST) requires an efficient, high-throughput data acquisition system capable of handling the increased sensitivity and resolution of Silicon Photo Multipliers (SiPMs). To address this challenge, we present an FPGA-based Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) implementation leveraging the RoCEv2...
NA64-e at CERN SPS is a missing energy search experiment looking for light dark matter particles production in the collision of a 100 GeV electron and positron (a part of POKER project) beams with an active thick target (electromagnetic calorimeter). The average beam intensity is approximately 5x106 particles per SPS spill of 4.8 s, resulting in an average particle rate of about 1 MHz. Looking...
The ARCADIA INFN collaboration developed a fully Depleted Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor (DMAPS) as technology demonstrator, using LFoundry 110nm technology node. The whole high-resistivity substrate can be depleted thanks to a custom backside process, that allows a very good electric field uniformity inside the sensing volume.
Technology demonstrators have been developed with an overall...
The next and current cryogenic experiments such as CUORE, CROSS and CUPID detect signals using thermistors operated at around $10\ mK$. To amplify the thermistor signals without impacting the resolution of the detector, the electronics needs to have very low series and parallel noise, especially at low frequencies, and high temperature stability. An ad-hoc amplification and digitalization...
Future high-energy physics experiments require advanced trigger systems to handle unprecedented data rates and efficiently identify rare processes. Simply scaling current computing power will not suffice; new paradigms, including on-detector artificial intelligence (AI), are needed to reduce data transfer and power consumption.
Current CMOS-based AI systems lack efficient hardware...
Expanding on the advancements of ArduSiPM, the first all-in-one scintillator particle detector combining System on Chip (SoC) technology with a SiPM, the LITE SLPD project has developed a next-generation version. The new design delivers better performance and is more compact by reducing external components and microcontroller size. The use of an optimized firmware and of the internal...
