An 8-channels GaAs IC front-end discriminator for RPC particle detectors

A front-end discriminator for application in readout electronics of gas chamber particle detectors, composed of a high-gain pulse amplifier integrated with a threshold comparator and an ECL logic buffer, has been designed. An 8-channels full custom chip has been fabricated in GaAs IC technology. The chip turns out very stable, featuring high voltage gain (>1000), gain-bandwidth product (1011) and sensitivity (~50uV), fast rise time (1.5ns), and only 25mW per channel of power consumption, while providing the ECL dynamic to the output pulses.