x5203 boards – Acquisition Modes
The A5203 and DT5203 supports Common Start, Common Stop, Trigger Matching and Streaming acquisition modes as described in the following lines.
Common Start
Ch O is the common start that opens the acquisition gate and represents the time reference for the acquisition. All the other N channels provide DT time measurements with respect to the reference channel. The gate width is programmable by software. Any hit falling outside the gate will be discarded. In the case of multiple hits fall inside an acquisition window for the same channel, only the first will be used for the DT (although all multiple hits will be acquired by the picoTDC).
- Trigger ID
- 56 bit coarse time stamp (LSB = 12.8 ns) for the absolute time
- List of To for all the channels: the Tref (i.e. Ch 0) fine time stamp (minimum LSB = 3.125 ps) and the list of DT (minimum LSB = 3.125 ps) for the channels from 1 to 63 (only those channels that have been hit)
- List of ToT (if enabled)
It is possible to save the leading edge only, or leading edge + ToT of the recorded hits.
Common Stop
Similar to common start, but the common time reference on Ch 0 is used as a stop that closes the acquisition gate. In case of multiple hits only the last one before the stop will be used.
Trigger Matching
A trigger signal (typically coming from the LEMO 00 inputs) defines a data acquisition window with programmable width and offset. All hits falling within that window will be recorded. Multi-hit acquisition is supported. All time measurements are referred to the start of the acquisition window with coarse timing resolution (LSB = 25.6 ns). However, the relative timing between the channels keeps the maximum resolution of 3.125 ps.
- Trigger ID
- 56 bit coarse time stamp (LSB = 12.8 ns) for the absolute time of the trigger
- List of the hit time stamps (ToA) of all channels (minimum LSB = 3.125 ps)
- List of ToT (if enabled)
It is possible to save the leading edge only, leading edge and trailing edge, or leading edge + ToT of the recorded hits.
Streaming
This acquisition mode implements a continuous hit recording, without any gate or trigger windowing. All hits received by the inputs are converted into a 64 bit time stamp (minimum LSB = 3.125 ps) and saved in the form of a sorted list. It is possible to save leading edge only, leading edge plus trailing edge or leading edge plus ToT (coming soon)