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INO ICAL Experiment emphasis on studying various properties of atmospheric neutrinos. A 50 kton Iron Calorimeter and Resistive plate Chamber (RPC) in stacked geometry will be used to track neutrinos. Position and directional information are to be used to identify particle energies. RPC detector signal of rise time less than 1ns is amplified-discriminated and given to Digital Front End (RPC-DAQ). To measure these fast pulses, we designed a low power, compact multi-channel Delay Chain based time-to-digital converter (TDC) in a 0.13μm CMOS process which will be integrated with the RPC-DAQ module. This TDC is capable of handling multiple hits per channel with a single-shot precision better than 65.34 ps. A 4-line or 11-line serial peripheral interface (SPI) is used for readout and configuration. This paper presents the performance and integration results of this TDC.

Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is a gaseous detector used for tracking charged particles. These detectors comprise of a sensitive gas volumes applied with high electric field between the end plates. When a charged particle traverses the TPC volume, it ionizes the gas atoms along its trajectory. The free electrons produced move towards anode with a speed depending on the gas mixture and the applied field. Arrival times and hit channel information are used to track the particle. In order to measure accurately, the arrival times of these slow-moving electrons at the anode, an FPGA-based start-Stop type TDC is designed. The TDC starts on trigger and stops on the arrival of electrons at each anode channel. Dynamic range of 160us and least count of 2.5 ns are obtained, which cover the entire particle trajectory. Also, another useful feature of this TDC is its multi-hit capability of up to 4 hits. Design features and preliminary test results of the TDC will be presented.

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