Open AccessA Radiation-Hard 8-Channel 15-bit 40-MSPS ADC for the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter Readout
Author(s) -
Rui Xu,
Jaroslav Ban,
Sarthak Kalani,
Chen-kai Hsu,
Subhajit Ray,
Brian Kirby,
Gabriel Matos,
Julia Gonski,
Andrew C. Smith,
Daniel M. Williams,
Kiley E. Kennedy,
Alan Kahn,
Michelle Contreras-Cossio,
Lauren Larson,
Michael Himmelsbach,
Devanshu Panchal,
Michael Unanian,
Xiangxing Yang,
Nan Sun,
John Parsons,
Timothy R. Andeen,
Peter R. Kinget
Publication year - 2025
Publication title -
ieee open journal of the solid-state circuits society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Magazines
eISSN - 2644-1349
DOI - 10.1109/ojsscs.2025.3573904
Subject(s) - components, circuits, devices and systems , photonics and electrooptics
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.