Overview
Certain detectors (for example MRPC) produce pulses only a few nanoseconds wide, with leading edges as short as a hundred picoseconds. Based on switched-capacitor array (SCA) technology, the input signal can be sampled at several GSps — or even over ten GSps — at comparatively low power consumption, enabling fine capture of fast pulses.
Through SCA, high-speed ADCs or interleaved parallel sampling, the complete detector waveform can be acquired, from which time, charge, amplitude, rising edge and pulse shape can be extracted. This approach is particularly well suited to analyzing nanosecond and sub-nanosecond fast pulses as well as complex irregular waveforms.