LANSCE wire scanner AFE: analysis, design, and fabrication

The goal of the design LANSCE-R Wire-Scanner Analog Front-end Electronics is to develop a high-performance, dual-axis wire-scanner analog front-end system implemented in a single cRIO module. This new design accommodates macropulse widths as wide as 700 {mu}s at a maximum pulse rate of 120Hz. A lossey integrator is utilized as the integration element to eliminate the requirement for providing gating signals to each wire scanner. The long macropulse and the high repetition rate present conflicting requirements for the design of the integrator. The long macropulse requires a long integration time constant to assure minimum integrator droop for accurate charge integration, and the high repetition rate requires a short time constant to assure adequate integrator reset between macropulses. Also, grounding is a serious concern due to the small signal levels. This paper reviews the basic Wire Scanner AFE system design implemented in the cRIO-module form factor to capture the charge information from the wire sensors and the grounding topology to assure minimum noise contamination of the wire signals.