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Evaluation of fast voltage discriminators in the picosecond time range

Conference · · IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.; (United States)
OSTI ID:6081889
An automated system for the evaluation of fast risetime voltage discriminators is described. A high-performance time digitizer is used to determine the elapsed time between the generation of a test pulse and the response of the discriminator under test. The measurement is repeated for a series of discriminator threshold levels generated by a digital-to-analog converter and the results compared to a photograph of the leading edge of the pulse obtained with a sampling socilloscope. To obtain high accuracy, an average of several thousand individual digitizations is used in each measurement to reduce the uncertainty to a maximum of +-3 ps. The measurement system is used with a test fixture to evaluate the performance of a number of tunnel diodes and in preliminary measurements of a prototype discriminator of new design.
Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley Lab., Berkeley, CA (US); Los Alamos National Lab., Los Alamos, NM (US)
OSTI ID:
6081889
Report Number(s):
CONF-881103-
Conference Information:
Journal Name: IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.; (United States) Journal Volume: 36:1
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English