DEMOKRITOS

NATIONAL CENTER FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

Digital & Analog electronics

for an autonomous, deep-sea
Gamma Ray Burst Neutrino
prototype detector

K. Manolopoulos, A. Belias, E. Kappos, C. Markou

 GRBNeT
 Gamma Ray Burst Neutrino Telescope
– Development, construction and testing of a prototype autonomous
detection unit
– anchored at the sea bed without any cabled connection to the shore
– able to operate for a prolonged time ( ~1year)

 A few tens of such arrays separated by 300-400 meters

from each other, will be able to cover a volume of ~ 10km 3
in the deep sea
– provide a sufficiently large observational volume
– capable of detecting high-energy neutrinos originating from GRBs

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 GRBNeT prototype layout
Detection Unit

130m

40m

• Grey spheres: Optical Modules

200m • Orange spheres: data acquisition electronics,
acoustic communication, power units
• Green spheres: Buoyancy
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 Detection Unit
 4 Optical Modules arranged in a
cross shaped frame

 Optical Module: 13-inch PMT

(R8055) housed inside a pressure
resistant glass sphere
– Detects Cherenkov light produced by
muons in the deep-sea

 Each cluster operates Optical Modules

autonomously in terms of
– Power supply
– data acquisition
– trigger systems

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 GRBNeT basic characteristics
 No dependency on cables
– Cost effective & easy to deploy
– Can be placed around any active underwater telescope

 PMTs look towards the horizon where there is maximum sensitivity for UHE
neutrinos
– Use high signal thresholds (> 5 p.e) to reduce data rate and minimize background

 Deep-sea deployment to reduce atmospheric background

 Power will be supplied by batteries at ambient pressure!

– Low power electronics

 Each floor has its own trigger and DAQ

– Synchronization between floors through LED beacons. 5
 Deployment Location
 Several locations near Pylos available at various depths
 Prototype deployment at 3500m
 GRBNeT autonomous prototype lines can also be deployed in other
KM3NeT sites

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Block Diagram of the Electronics Container
Optical Modules

Multiple Threshold PMTs

Discriminator voltage controller

…
Input lines

10MHz Clock
FMC
PPS
Microcontroller
Atomic
Clock Spartan - 6 Compass Tilt-meter Acoustic
FPGA Modem
Slow Control
Unit
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Electronics Container
ANALOG ELECTRONICS

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 PMT base
 To minimize power consumption we developed a new PMT base
– Cockroft-Walton (CW) voltage multiplier to operate up to 2.5kV
– HV-controller with ultra low-power microcontrollers

 Each Optical Module features a HV control unit to drive the CW,

producing the desired voltage for the specific PMT (R8055)

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 Gain vs. High Voltage
• Comparison between PMTs with CW-base and
Resistive-base

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 Multiple Threshold Discriminator
• Each PMT transmits the analog signal to a multiple threshold level
discriminator
– 4 thresholds for this prototype are chosen to cover a large dynamic
range of PMT signals
– Analog signal is compared to a very low, low, medium and a high
threshold

• When a threshold level is crossed the discriminator outputs a

digitized pulse
– Pulse lasts for as long as the analog signal remains above that threshold.

• The digitized pulses are used as input to the FPGA

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DIGITAL ELECTRONICS

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 FPGA Design Requirements
 Detect events of interest, based on PMTs digitized outputs

 Measure spatial and temporal characteristics of these events (i.e.

duration, intensity)

 Use an atomic clock as an autonomous, free-running reference

clock for synchronicity and time-stamping

 Store the result locally to a permanent data storage

 Collect and store operational data and data from auxiliary devices

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 Hardware Components

Spartan-6
LX16 Evaluation Kit

FMC XM105

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Chip Scale Atomic Clock
FPGA Design Block Diagram

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 Coincidence Logic Unit
 Searches for PMT signals that “coincide” within a small
time window

 State machine monitors if at least 2 out of 4 PMTs produce

a pulse within a 200ns window (2-fold coincidence)

 If a 2-fold coincidence is detected

– Time window expands to 200ns + 100ns
– At the end of the expanded 300ns window all PMT data are
stored

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 Time Over Threshold calculation

• Use of different clock domains to calculate coarse time and fine

time
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 Rate Measurement Unit
 Detects incoming pulses (monitoring the every threshold
level)

 Counts the number of incoming pulses within a

programmable time window (i.e. 1sec)

 At the end of the time window results are stored to a RAM

 Permanent storage of the rate measurements is done

periodically

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 Writing to SD Card
 Communication wit SD cards via SPI protocol
 Current estimate of trigger rates ~ 10Hz
 Data size of each detected event ~200bytes
 Worst-case scenario of continuous
10Hz rate => 7.2Mb/hour => ~63Gb/year

(regarding the data rates see also K. Pikounis talk)

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Control Unit
– Handles synchronization and control signals
– Responsible for data and command handling
– Periodically initiate data storage to the SD cards

Slow Control Unit

– Implemented at a separate board that hosts a PIC microcontroller
• Controls/monitors the PMTs voltages
• Communicates via I2C with
– Tiltmeter
– Compass
• Communicates with the Acoustic Modem
• Stores periodically the gathered data to an SD Card

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 FPGA Design Implementation Results

FPGA Utilization
Implementation Slice Slice LUTs Occupied MUXCYs RAMB16
Results Registers Slices
FPGA 3098 2039 1168 672 25
Design (17%) (22%) (51%) (15%) (78%)

Power Consumption
(Xilinx power analyzer)
Total Power 375 mW
Quiescent Power 93mW
Dynamic Power 282 mW

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 CSAC Atomic Clock
• Chip Scale Atomic Clock (Microsemi SA)
– World’s smallest, lowest power atomic clock technology
– Low power consumption (< 125mW)
– Enables atomic timing accuracy in portable, battery powered
applications
– Provides 10 MHz clk and PPS

Simplified CSAC block diagram

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 Conclusions
• Developed the DAQ system of the GRBNeT autonomous
detection unit
– Flexible design
• utilize general purpose FPGA
– Compartmentalized functionality
– Can easily be adapted to future changes

• Project is on-going
– All aspects of the project are being tested in lab. environment
– Preparations for the deployment have started
– Schedule for deployment with HCMR R/V "AEGAEO" is being prepared
…Stay tuned!!!

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 Thank you for
your attention!!

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BACKUP SLIDES

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PMT Calibration with the CW-base

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