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Entry  Tue Jan 31 08:10:37 2012, Stefan Ritt, IEEE Real Time 2012 Call for Abstracts 

Hello,

I'm co-organizing the upcoming Real Time Conference, which covers also fields of waveform processing and sampling, so it might be interesting for people working with the DRS4 chip. If you have recent results, you could also consider to send an abstract to this conference.  It will be nicely located in Berkeley, California. We plan excursions to San Francisco and to Napa Valley.

Best regards,

Stefan Ritt


18th Real Time Conference
June 11 – 15, 2012
Berkeley, CA

We invite you to the Hotel Shattuck Plaza in downtown Berkeley, California for
the 2012 Real-Time Conference (RT2012).   It will take place Monday, June 11
through Friday, June 15, 2012, with optional pre-conference tutorials Saturday
and Sunday, June 9-10.

Like the previous editions, RT2012 will be a multidisciplinary conference
devoted to the latest developments on realtime techniques in the fields of
plasma and nuclear fusion, particle physics, nuclear physics and astrophysics,
space science, accelerators, medical physics, nuclear power instrumentation and
other radiation instrumentation.

Abstract submission is open as of 18 January (deadline 2 March). Please visit

http://www.npss-confs.org/rtc/welcome.asp?flag=44675.77&Retry=1 to submit an

abstract.

Call for Abstracts 

RT 2012 is an interdisciplinary conference on realtime data acquisition and
computing applications in the physical sciences. These applications include:

* High energy physics 
* Nuclear physics 
* Astrophysics and astroparticle physics 
* Nuclear fusion 
* Medical physics 
* Space instrumentation 
* Nuclear power instrumentation 
* Realtime security and safety 
* General Radiation Instrumentation 

Specific topics include (but are certainly not limited to) the list shown below.
We welcome correspondence to see how your research fits our venue.   

Key Dates

* Abstract submission opened:  January 18, 2012 
* Abstract deadline:  March 2, 2012 
* Program available: April 2 

Suggested Topics

* Realtime system architectures 
* Intelligent signal processing 
* Programmable devices 
* Fast data transfer links and networks 
* Trigger systems 
* Data acquisition 
* Processing farms 
* Control, monitoring, and test systems 
* Upgrades 
* Emerging realtime technologies 
* New standards 
* Realtime safety and security 
* Feedback on experiences 

Contact Information

If you have a question or wish to opt in for occasional e-mail updates about
RT2012, send us a message at RT2012@lbl.gov. To view full conference
information, visit http://rt2012.lbl.gov/index.html

Entry  Thu Jan 26 09:12:03 2012, Ravindra Raghunath Shinde, DRS4 Rev2.0 for analog pulse counting 

Hello,

We are using DRS4 Rev.2.0 board.

We want to measure number of pulses generated  by charge particle detector. These negative going analog pulses are very fast having rise time about 2nS.

We want keep threshold level to -20mV. We expected pulse rate to be about 100 to 200 Hz.

I need help to implement this in  current DRS board with  dead time free operation.

 

    Reply  Thu Jan 26 09:15:42 2012, Stefan Ritt, DRS4 Rev2.0 for analog pulse counting 

Ravindra Raghunath Shinde wrote:

Hello,

We are using DRS4 Rev.2.0 board.

We want to measure number of pulses generated  by charge particle detector. These negative going analog pulses are very fast having rise time about 2nS.

We want keep threshold level to -20mV. We expected pulse rate to be about 100 to 200 Hz.

I need help to implement this in  current DRS board with  dead time free operation.

 

If you just want to count pulses, you do not need a DRS board. Just use a discriminator and a counter, that's much simpler. The DRS board is not dead time free. 

       Reply  Thu Jan 26 09:44:34 2012, Ravindra Raghunath Shinde, DRS4 Rev2.0 for analog pulse counting 

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Ravindra Raghunath Shinde wrote:

Hello,

We are using DRS4 Rev.2.0 board.

We want to measure number of pulses generated  by charge particle detector. These negative going analog pulses are very fast having rise time about 2nS.

We want keep threshold level to -20mV. We expected pulse rate to be about 100 to 200 Hz.

I need help to implement this in  current DRS board with  dead time free operation.

 

If you just want to count pulses, you do not need a DRS board. Just use a discriminator and a counter, that's much simpler. The DRS board is not dead time free. 

 Thanks for your prompt reply.

Along with pulse rate  we also want see pulse shape as well as charge measurements. That is why we are exploring this option with our existing DRS Set-up.

 

          Reply  Thu Jan 26 09:49:38 2012, Stefan Ritt, DRS4 Rev2.0 for analog pulse counting 

Ravindra Raghunath Shinde wrote:

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Ravindra Raghunath Shinde wrote:

Hello,

We are using DRS4 Rev.2.0 board.

We want to measure number of pulses generated  by charge particle detector. These negative going analog pulses are very fast having rise time about 2nS.

We want keep threshold level to -20mV. We expected pulse rate to be about 100 to 200 Hz.

I need help to implement this in  current DRS board with  dead time free operation.

 

If you just want to count pulses, you do not need a DRS board. Just use a discriminator and a counter, that's much simpler. The DRS board is not dead time free. 

 Thanks for your prompt reply.

Along with pulse rate  we also want see pulse shape as well as charge measurements. That is why we are exploring this option with our existing DRS Set-up.

 

I understand that. But still the board has some dead time which is dominated by the USB data transfer speed.

There is a way to perform the counting dead time free, but that requires the V4 board, which has a hardware comparator on all four channels (The V2 board has only one comparator and a multiplexer). The output of these comparators go directly to the FPGA, which can then trigger on these signals. In principle one could implement a hardware counter in the FPGA, which works practically dead time free. But this requires a new firmware which has to be written. Either you do it yourself using the Xilinx development tools, or you wait until I find some time to implement this, which could take a couple of weeks or even months.

Best regards,

Stefan 

             Reply  Thu Jan 26 10:05:57 2012, Ravindra Raghunath Shinde, DRS4 Rev2.0 for analog pulse counting 

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Ravindra Raghunath Shinde wrote:

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Ravindra Raghunath Shinde wrote:

Hello,

We are using DRS4 Rev.2.0 board.

We want to measure number of pulses generated  by charge particle detector. These negative going analog pulses are very fast having rise time about 2nS.

We want keep threshold level to -20mV. We expected pulse rate to be about 100 to 200 Hz.

I need help to implement this in  current DRS board with  dead time free operation.

 

If you just want to count pulses, you do not need a DRS board. Just use a discriminator and a counter, that's much simpler. The DRS board is not dead time free. 

 Thanks for your prompt reply.

Along with pulse rate  we also want see pulse shape as well as charge measurements. That is why we are exploring this option with our existing DRS Set-up.

 

I understand that. But still the board has some dead time which is dominated by the USB data transfer speed.

There is a way to perform the counting dead time free, but that requires the V4 board, which has a hardware comparator on all four channels (The V2 board has only one comparator and a multiplexer). The output of these comparators go directly to the FPGA, which can then trigger on these signals. In principle one could implement a hardware counter in the FPGA, which works practically dead time free. But this requires a new firmware which has to be written. Either you do it yourself using the Xilinx development tools, or you wait until I find some time to implement this, which could take a couple of weeks or even months.

Best regards,

Stefan 

 Thank you very much.

With regards,

Ravindra R. Shinde

Entry  Thu Jan 19 23:26:26 2012, Heejong Kim, drs_exam.cpp for evaluation board version 4 

Hello,

I'm using DRS4 evaluation board version4 in Linux (Scientific Linux 5).

Version4 software (drs-4.0.0) was installed without any troubles.

The oscilloscope interfrace program (drsosc) is working fine with version4 software.

But when I tried drs_exam program, it doesn't work as expected.

(500 mV positive (width 50ns)  pulse is connected to Ch#1).

It keeps waiting trigger in the first event.

In the previous version (board/software drs-3.0.0), drs_exam program worked well.

I'm wondering if anybody is using drs_exam with V4 evaluation board.

Any comments/help would be welcomed.

 

Thanks,

Heejong

    Reply  Fri Jan 20 08:09:38 2012, Stefan Ritt, drs_exam.cpp for evaluation board version 4 drs_exam.cpp

Heejong Kim wrote:

Hello,

I'm using DRS4 evaluation board version4 in Linux (Scientific Linux 5).

Version4 software (drs-4.0.0) was installed without any troubles.

The oscilloscope interfrace program (drsosc) is working fine with version4 software.

But when I tried drs_exam program, it doesn't work as expected.

(500 mV positive (width 50ns)  pulse is connected to Ch#1).

It keeps waiting trigger in the first event.

In the previous version (board/software drs-3.0.0), drs_exam program worked well.

I'm wondering if anybody is using drs_exam with V4 evaluation board.

The issue is that the V4 board has new trigger capabilities (such as coincidences between two channels) which require a slightly different configuration. Here it the new code:

 

   /* use following lines to enable hardware trigger on CH1 at 50 mV positive edge */
   if (b->GetBoardType() == 8) {     // Evaluaiton Board V4
      b->EnableTrigger(1, 0);           // enable hardware trigger
      b->SetTriggerSource(1<<0);        // set CH1 as source
   } else {                          // Evaluation Board V3
      b->EnableTrigger(0, 1);           // lemo off, analog trigger on
      b->SetTriggerSource(0);           // use CH1 as source
   }

The complete file is attached. Please try again with the new code. Probably next week I will make a new software release (including a Mac version of all programs) which will contain the new code. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Best regards,
Stefan

 

 

 

       Reply  Fri Jan 20 23:50:39 2012, Heejong Kim, drs_exam.cpp for evaluation board version 4 

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Heejong Kim wrote:

Hello,

I'm using DRS4 evaluation board version4 in Linux (Scientific Linux 5).

Version4 software (drs-4.0.0) was installed without any troubles.

The oscilloscope interfrace program (drsosc) is working fine with version4 software.

But when I tried drs_exam program, it doesn't work as expected.

(500 mV positive (width 50ns)  pulse is connected to Ch#1).

It keeps waiting trigger in the first event.

In the previous version (board/software drs-3.0.0), drs_exam program worked well.

I'm wondering if anybody is using drs_exam with V4 evaluation board.

The issue is that the V4 board has new trigger capabilities (such as coincidences between two channels) which require a slightly different configuration. Here it the new code:

 

   /* use following lines to enable hardware trigger on CH1 at 50 mV positive edge */
   if (b->GetBoardType() == 8) {     // Evaluaiton Board V4
      b->EnableTrigger(1, 0);           // enable hardware trigger
      b->SetTriggerSource(1<<0);        // set CH1 as source
   } else {                          // Evaluation Board V3
      b->EnableTrigger(0, 1);           // lemo off, analog trigger on
      b->SetTriggerSource(0);           // use CH1 as source
   }

The complete file is attached. Please try again with the new code. Probably next week I will make a new software release (including a Mac version of all programs) which will contain the new code. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Best regards,
Stefan

 

 

 

Hello Stefan,

Thanks for your prompt reply.

drs_exam is working now after modification as above.

By some trials, I found that external trigger is possible by 'b->EnableTrigger(1,0); b->SetTriggerSource(1<<4);'

Best,

Heejong

 

 

Entry  Wed Dec 14 00:44:37 2011, Hao Huan, Synchronization Delay in the Firmware for 8051 Controller 

Hi Stefan,

    I have a question regarding the DRS 4 evaluation board firmware for the 8051 controller embedded in the CY7C68013 USB chip: on the board the controller is running at 12 MHz and the FIFO interface of the USB chip is running at 30 MHz, so the number of delay cycles for synchronization as defined in fx2sdly.h should be (3*12000+5*30000-1)/(2*30000)=3, but the actual number used in drs_eval.c is (3*12000+5*48000-1)/(2*48000)=2, so there is a mismatch between the IFCLK frequency used in this calculation and the actual IFCLK frequency configured. Am I misunderstanding something or is there an explanation for that?

 

    Thanks,

Hao Huan

    Reply  Wed Dec 14 08:55:29 2011, Stefan Ritt, Synchronization Delay in the Firmware for 8051 Controller 

Hao Huan wrote:

Hi Stefan,

    I have a question regarding the DRS 4 evaluation board firmware for the 8051 controller embedded in the CY7C68013 USB chip: on the board the controller is running at 12 MHz and the FIFO interface of the USB chip is running at 30 MHz, so the number of delay cycles for synchronization as defined in fx2sdly.h should be (3*12000+5*30000-1)/(2*30000)=3, but the actual number used in drs_eval.c is (3*12000+5*48000-1)/(2*48000)=2, so there is a mismatch between the IFCLK frequency used in this calculation and the actual IFCLK frequency configured. Am I misunderstanding something or is there an explanation for that?

 

    Thanks,

Hao Huan

You are right. The SYNCDELAY should contain three wait cycles. I kind of remember that this delay is not very critical. That might be the reason why the system works even with the wrong delay reliably. 

Entry  Mon Dec 12 16:43:04 2011, Stefan Ritt, DC coupled DRS4 input stage DRS4_front_end_DC.pdf

In the attachement you will find a working DC-coupled input stage to the DRS4 chip. The bandwidth of this design is about 700 MHz, the gain is 1.

The upper version does not have an additional input buffer. This is not a very "clean" design, since the differential driver has an input impedance of 150 Ohm, which together with the 75 Ohm termination resistor gives about 50 Ohm termination. 

The lover version has an additional input buffer, which nicely decouples the input from the differential driver, so a proper 50 Ohm termination can be used at the cost of additional power for that buffer.

The COM common mode voltage and the OFS voltage have to be set according to the required input range, so that ranges such as 0V...1V, -0.5V...+0.5V, -1V...0V can be used. The COM voltage can be high impedance (simple resistor divider), while the OFS voltage needs to be low impedance (fast active buffer). The analog switch ADG918 can be used to digitize a precise calibration voltage CAL+, which can then be used for precise gain calibration of the DRS4 sampling cells.

Entry  Thu Apr 14 18:23:53 2011, Bob Hirosky, Fixes to DOScreen.cpp for recent built on linux 
Hello,

I was just building version 3.1.0 and ran into some problems in DOScreen.cpp.  Basically the conversions from
char* to wxString were generating "ambiguous overload" errors (in gcc 4.4.3, wx-2.8)

The simple fix is given in  the following diff output.

Cheers,

Bob

diff drs-3.1.0_o/src/DOScreen.cpp drs-3.1.0/src
237c237
<      wxst = wxString(m_frame->GetOsci()->GetDebugMsg(),wxConvUTF8);  //BH
---
>       wxst = m_frame->GetOsci()->GetDebugMsg();
246c246
<       wxst = wxString(m_debugMsg,wxConvUTF8);  //BH
---
>       wxst = m_debugMsg;
477c477
<     wxst = wxString("AUTO",wxConvUTF8); //BH
---
>          wxst = "AUTO";
479c479
<     wxst = wxString("TRIG?",wxConvUTF8);  //BH
---
>          wxst = "TRIG?";
 
    Reply  Fri Apr 15 08:28:54 2011, Stefan Ritt, Fixes to DOScreen.cpp for recent built on linux 
> Hello,
> 
> I was just building version 3.1.0 and ran into some problems in DOScreen.cpp.  Basically the conversions from
> char* to wxString were generating "ambiguous overload" errors (in gcc 4.4.3, wx-2.8)
> 
> The simple fix is given in  the following diff output.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Bob
> 
> diff drs-3.1.0_o/src/DOScreen.cpp drs-3.1.0/src
> 237c237
> <      wxst = wxString(m_frame->GetOsci()->GetDebugMsg(),wxConvUTF8);  //BH
> ---
> >       wxst = m_frame->GetOsci()->GetDebugMsg();
> 246c246
> <       wxst = wxString(m_debugMsg,wxConvUTF8);  //BH
> ---
> >       wxst = m_debugMsg;
> 477c477
> <     wxst = wxString("AUTO",wxConvUTF8); //BH
> ---
> >          wxst = "AUTO";
> 479c479
> <     wxst = wxString("TRIG?",wxConvUTF8);  //BH
> ---
> >          wxst = "TRIG?";
>  

Thanks for mentioning this. I always overlook this because I develop under Windows where this warning does not show 
up. I fixed that in the current version. Usually I just use _T() instead wxString() because this is shorter and 
recommended by the developers.

Cheers, Stefan.
    Reply  Fri Dec 9 17:45:48 2011, Michael Büker, Fixes to DOScreen.cpp for recent built on linux 
> I was just building version 3.1.0 and ran into some problems in DOScreen.cpp.  Basically the conversions from
> char* to wxString were generating "ambiguous overload" errors (in gcc 4.4.3, wx-2.8)
> 
> The simple fix is given in  the following diff output.

Today, I ran into the same problem and was happy to find your fix. I've incorporated it into a unified diff file,
that can easily be applied with the patch program by saving it into a file ('drsosc-3.1.0-wxfix.patch', say), and
in the drs-3.1.0 directory running:

patch -1 < drsosc-3.1.0-wxfix.patch

This is the file:

--- src/DOScreen.cpp.orig	2011-12-09 15:49:48.682201902 +0100
+++ src/DOScreen.cpp		2011-12-09 15:51:45.666000111 +0100
@@ -234,7 +234,7 @@ void DOScreen::DrawWaveform(wxDC& dc, wx
 
    // display optional debug messages
    if (*m_frame->GetOsci()->GetDebugMsg()) {
-      wxst = m_frame->GetOsci()->GetDebugMsg();
+      wxst = wxString(m_frame->GetOsci()->GetDebugMsg(),wxConvUTF8);
       dc.SetPen(wxPen(*wxLIGHT_GREY, 1, wxSOLID));
       dc.SetBrush(*wxGREEN);
       dc.SetTextForeground(*wxBLACK);
@@ -243,7 +243,7 @@ void DOScreen::DrawWaveform(wxDC& dc, wx
       dc.DrawText(wxst, m_x1+4, m_y1+2);
    }
    if (m_debugMsg[0]) {
-      wxst = m_debugMsg;
+      wxst = wxString(m_debugMsg,wxConvUTF8);
       dc.SetPen(wxPen(*wxLIGHT_GREY, 1, wxSOLID));
       dc.SetBrush(*wxGREEN);
       dc.SetTextForeground(*wxBLACK);
@@ -474,9 +474,9 @@ void DOScreen::DrawWaveform(wxDC& dc, wx
    if (m_osci->GetNumberOfBoards() && m_osci->IsIdle()) {
       dc.SetTextForeground(*wxGREEN);
       if (m_osci->GetTriggerMode() == TM_AUTO)
-         wxst = "AUTO";
+         wxst = wxString("AUTO",wxConvUTF8);
       else
-         wxst = "TRIG?";
+         wxst = wxString("TRIG?",wxConvUTF8);
       dc.GetTextExtent(wxst, &w, &h);
       dc.DrawText(wxst, m_x2 - w - 2, m_y1 + 1);
    }
Entry  Mon Oct 31 09:15:02 2011, Zhongwei Du, How to link PMT 

I want to measure the signal from PMT . But it is a current signal, should i just put a series resistance, or use a amplifier to convert it to voltage signal before drs4?  

Can you give me some advice ? 

    Reply  Tue Nov 1 11:07:02 2011, Stefan Ritt, How to link PMT 

Zhongwei Du wrote:

I want to measure the signal from PMT . But it is a current signal, should i just put a series resistance, or use a amplifier to convert it to voltage signal before drs4?  

Can you give me some advice ? 

The evaluation board has a 50 Ohm termination resistor, which already converts your current into a voltage signal. If the resulting signal is too low (<20 mV) you can put in an amplifier or raise the HV of your PMT (inside the valid range given by its datasheet of course).

- Stefan 

Entry  Sun Oct 23 23:32:28 2011, Hao Huan, Phase Shift for ADC Readout 

Dear Dr. Ritt,

    In the DRS 4 datasheet it is recommended to sample the analog output of the chip after 8~10 ns of the SRCLK edge for it to stablize and thus a phase shift between SRCLK and the ADC sampling clock is necessary. However in the latest version of the evaluation board firmware the phase-shifted clock was generated but not really used for the ADC interface. Is there any reason for that?

    Reply  Mon Oct 24 10:30:15 2011, Stefan Ritt, Phase Shift for ADC Readout 

Hao Huan wrote:

Dear Dr. Ritt,

    In the DRS 4 datasheet it is recommended to sample the analog output of the chip after 8~10 ns of the SRCLK edge for it to stablize and thus a phase shift between SRCLK and the ADC sampling clock is necessary. However in the latest version of the evaluation board firmware the phase-shifted clock was generated but not really used for the ADC interface. Is there any reason for that?

Good questions. I looked myself in the code and found:

  drs_readout_clk       <= I_CLK33;

  drs_readout_clk_ps    <= I_CLK33; -- phase shifted clock for FADC

  drs_serial_clk        <= I_CLK33;

which is apparently wrong (should be drs_readout_clk_ps <= I_CLK33_PS;) . But apparently the board is working with the unshifted clock. Could be that the PCB traces to the DRS and the ADC have different lengths, and by accident, they have just the right value.

The way to find that out is to keep the ADC clock phase variable (most FPGAs allow a +-5 ns phase adjustment inside their clock blocks), and then try different values. If the phase shift is wrong, you will see spikes every 32 samples in the readout. The spikes are always there (from some internal switching of bus segments), and you can see them with a differential probe at the DRS output. The ADC phase must then be made such that the sampling point of the ADC comes after that spike, just at the end of the settling time, barely before the next analog value shows up at the DRS output. This is a bit tricky and can be made best just by trying out different values.

Entry  Sat Oct 15 04:45:25 2011, Aurelien Bouvier, DRS4 eval board: readout rate 

Hi,

Our setup uses a DRS4 evaluation board (version 2.0).

Although we trigger the board at a rate of ~4kHz (on channel2), readout through USB2 is only happening at a rate of ~125Hz.

After some investigation, we could pin down that it is due to the time it takes to complete the following commands: musb_write() and musb_read() which both take ~150 microsecond to complete. Because they are called multiple times, reading out 1 trigger takes ~8 millisecond which explains the 125Hz we're seeing.

Is ~150 us to complete a musb_read()/musb_write() command expected?

Is there any way we could speed up the readout rate of the DRS4 board so that data acquisition through USB2 is closer to our trigger rate of 4kHz?

Any feedback you might have on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Aurelien

    Reply  Sat Oct 22 00:40:02 2011, Stefan Ritt, DRS4 eval board: readout rate 

Aurelien Bouvier wrote:

Hi,

Our setup uses a DRS4 evaluation board (version 2.0).

Although we trigger the board at a rate of ~4kHz (on channel2), readout through USB2 is only happening at a rate of ~125Hz.

After some investigation, we could pin down that it is due to the time it takes to complete the following commands: musb_write() and musb_read() which both take ~150 microsecond to complete. Because they are called multiple times, reading out 1 trigger takes ~8 millisecond which explains the 125Hz we're seeing.

Is ~150 us to complete a musb_read()/musb_write() command expected?

Is there any way we could speed up the readout rate of the DRS4 board so that data acquisition through USB2 is closer to our trigger rate of 4kHz?

Any feedback you might have on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Aurelien

With version 4 of the DRSOsc program and a decent computer, you should be able to achieve something close to 500 Hz, but that's the limit. The board is for evaluation purposes of the chip, not for production data acquisition. The main limit comes from USB2, which is limited to ~25 MB/sec. We are in the process of designing a new board with Gigabit Ethernet readout, with which you should be able to get your 4 kHz. But this board will not be ready before spring. There is also a VME board by CAEN in Italy which sits in a VME crate. This board is also much faster than the USB board. Here is the link:

http://www.caen.it/csite/CaenProfList.jsp?parent=13&Type=WOCateg&prodsupp=home

 

Entry  Fri Sep 16 22:06:07 2011, Andriy Zatserklyaniy, compilation error for version 4.0.0 on linux 

Hi Stefan,

When I compiled DRS4 software version 4.0.0 on Linux (Debian Squeeze) I got this compilation error:

g++ -g -O2 -Wall -Wuninitialized -fno-strict-aliasing -Iinclude -DOS_LINUX -DHAVE_LIBUSB -DUSE_DRS_MUTEX musbstd.o mxml.o strlcpy.o DRS.o ConfigDialog.o DOFrame.o DOScreen.o DRSOsc.o MeasureDialog.o Measurement.o Osci.o InfoDialog.o DisplayDialog.o AboutDialog.o EPThread.o rb.o main.o -o drsosc -lpthread -lutil -lusb -pthread   -lwx_gtk2u_richtext-2.8 -lwx_gtk2u_aui-2.8 -lwx_gtk2u_xrc-2.8 -lwx_gtk2u_qa-2.8 -lwx_gtk2u_html-2.8 -lwx_gtk2u_adv-2.8 -lwx_gtk2u_core-2.8 -lwx_baseu_xml-2.8 -lwx_baseu_net-2.8 -lwx_baseu-2.8
DOFrame.o: In function `DOFrame':
/srv/zatserkl/work/drs4/drs-4.0.0/src/DOFrame.cpp:237: undefined reference to `TriggerDialog::TriggerDialog(wxWindow*)'
/srv/zatserkl/work/drs4/drs-4.0.0/src/DOFrame.cpp:237: undefined reference to `TriggerDialog::TriggerDialog(wxWindow*)'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [drsosc] Error 1

 

To fix it I added TriggerDialog.o into CPP_OBJ line of the Makefile:

 

CPP_OBJ       = DRS.o ConfigDialog.o DOFrame.o DOScreen.o DRSOsc.o MeasureDialog.o Measurement.o Osci.o InfoDialog.o DisplayDialog.o AboutDialog.o EPThread.o rb.o TriggerDialog.o

 

Best,

Andriy.

    Reply  Mon Sep 19 08:53:22 2011, Stefan Ritt, compilation error for version 4.0.0 on linux 

Andriy Zatserklyaniy wrote:

To fix it I added TriggerDialog.o into CPP_OBJ line of the Makefile:

Thanks. I added your fix to the current 4.0.0 distribution.

- Stefan 

Entry  Wed Sep 7 16:45:17 2011, Guillaume Blanchard, DRS4 and AD9222 

Hello,

I am designing a DAQ board with both DRS4 + AD9222 and a  FPGA to monitor.

Do I have to change the default value of O-OFS ?

Does a simple low-pass filter (series resistor + capacitor) on each AD9222 input is enough to limit the noise ?

I am planning to use the (DRS4,AD9222,FPGA) group as both a trigger and digitizing system (as shown in the DRS4 datasheet). The DRS4 will be working at 5Ghz with 8 active channels.
So each channel will have a time depth of 1/5Ghz x 1024 = 204.8ns. So, in order to miss nothing, the ADC latency + the trigger decision must be inferior to 204.8ns, am I correct ?
This leads me to implement on my board the 65Mhz version of the AD9222 as this converter has a 8 clock period latency, i.e. 123ns and it left me 81ns to perform a trigger decision ?

Cordially,

G.Blanchard

    Reply  Wed Sep 7 16:56:43 2011, Stefan Ritt, DRS4 and AD9222 

Guillaume Blanchard wrote:

Hello,

I am designing a DAQ board with both DRS4 + AD9222 and a  FPGA to monitor.

Do I have to change the default value of O-OFS ?

Does a simple low-pass filter (series resistor + capacitor) on each AD9222 input is enough to limit the noise ?

I am planning to use the (DRS4,AD9222,FPGA) group as both a trigger and digitizing system (as shown in the DRS4 datasheet). The DRS4 will be working at 5Ghz with 8 active channels.
So each channel will have a time depth of 1/5Ghz x 1024 = 204.8ns. So, in order to miss nothing, the ADC latency + the trigger decision must be inferior to 204.8ns, am I correct ?
This leads me to implement on my board the 65Mhz version of the AD9222 as this converter has a 8 clock period latency, i.e. 123ns and it left me 81ns to perform a trigger decision ?

Cordially,

G.Blanchard

I'm not so sure about the temperature stability of the default (DRS4 internal O-OFS) value, that's why I used a precision DAC in my design. But actually I never tried without. Probably the default internal value is good enough if you calibrate each chip (which you do anyhow).

Most designs use no filter between DRS4 and AD9222. Since the DRS4 output is BW limited at around 50 MHz, there is not much you win if you put a 32.5 MHz low pass there. And the PCS gets just so much simpler.

You are right with the latency of the AD9222, this is an issue. From the remaining 81 ns you loose a few going out of the FPGA, you need one or two FPGA clock cycles to make the decision, the DRS4 has also some stopping latency (maybe 10 ns). So you are at the edge. Some people use hardware comparators which are faster than the AD9222, one guy uses even directly an LVDS input of the FPGA "mis-used" as a comparator, where the comparator level (=LVDS negative input) comes from a DAC.

 

- Stefan

    Reply  Wed Sep 7 17:28:25 2011, Hannes Friederich, DRS4 and AD9222 

Guillaume Blanchard wrote:

Hello,

I am designing a DAQ board with both DRS4 + AD9222 and a  FPGA to monitor.

Do I have to change the default value of O-OFS ?

Does a simple low-pass filter (series resistor + capacitor) on each AD9222 input is enough to limit the noise ?

I am planning to use the (DRS4,AD9222,FPGA) group as both a trigger and digitizing system (as shown in the DRS4 datasheet). The DRS4 will be working at 5Ghz with 8 active channels.
So each channel will have a time depth of 1/5Ghz x 1024 = 204.8ns. So, in order to miss nothing, the ADC latency + the trigger decision must be inferior to 204.8ns, am I correct ?
This leads me to implement on my board the 65Mhz version of the AD9222 as this converter has a 8 clock period latency, i.e. 123ns and it left me 81ns to perform a trigger decision ?

Cordially,

G.Blanchard

 Like Stefan pointed out, your time constraints are quite tight. In those 81 ns, you also need to deserialize the AD9222 output. Unless you implement some really fancy input comparison logic, this will consume another 1-2 ADC clock cycles. Perhaps you should first verify that your FPGA design actually can do its job within those 81 ns. In our system, we sample at only 1-2 GHz and have enough margin to implement really complex triggers in FPGA. But the total latency (ADC + FPGA deserialization) takes 250 ns.

Depending on the application, you do need a low-pass filter. Not only because of the noise, but also in order to be able to trigger reliably. Using fast PMTs for example, you will not be able to see all pulses in full size if the bandwidth is 50 MHz and you're only sampling at 65 MSPS.

Hannes

       Reply  Fri Sep 9 09:28:57 2011, Guillaume Blanchard, DRS4 and AD9222 

Thank you for your answers,

Another question : Have you ever tried to split the differential signal at the output of the DRS4 chip ? For example to feed both an AD9222 and a diff. amplifier (followed by discriminators) ?

 

          Reply  Fri Sep 9 09:31:33 2011, Stefan Ritt, DRS4 and AD9222 

Guillaume Blanchard wrote:

Thank you for your answers,

Another question : Have you ever tried to split the differential signal at the output of the DRS4 chip ? For example to feed both an AD9222 and a diff. amplifier (followed by discriminators) ?

 

Yes. Just have a look at the schematics of the evaluation board. This is exactly what is done there.

Actually in the newest version we went one step further and put the comparator at the input of the DRS chip. This way it is active even during the readout of the DRS4 chip and we can use this as a counter to count the overall hit rate at the input.

 

- Stefan

Entry  Mon Jul 19 12:07:04 2010, Jinhong Wang, Fixed Patter Timing Jitter 

 Hi Stefan, can you give some suggestions on determination of fixed pattern timing jitter of DRS4?  Thanks~

    Reply  Mon Jul 19 12:47:17 2010, Stefan Ritt, Fixed Patter Timing Jitter Capture.png

Jinhong Wang wrote:

 Hi Stefan, can you give some suggestions on determination of fixed pattern timing jitter of DRS4?  Thanks~

I will prepare some more detailed description of how to do this in the near future, but we are still learning ourselves constantly how to do that better. 


So for the moment I only can recommend you to read the function DRSBoard::CalibrateTiming() and AnalyzeWF(). What you basically do is to define an array of "effective" bin widths t[i]. You start with the nominal bin width (let's say 500ps at 2 GSPS). Now you measure a periodic signal, and look for the zero crossings. If you have a 100 MHz clock, the time between two positive transitions (low-to-high) is 10.000ns. Now you measure the width as seen by the DRS chip, assuming the effective bin widths. The exact zero crossing you interpolate between two samples to improve the accuracy. Now you measure something different, let's say 10.1ns. So you know the ~20 bins between the zero crossings are "too wide", but you don't know which one of them is too wide. So you distribute the "too wide" equally between all bins, that is you decrease the effective width of these bins from 500ps to 500-0.1ns/20=499.995 ps. Then you do this iteratively, that is for all cycles in the waveform, and for many (1000's) of recorded waveforms. It is important that the phase of you measured clock is random, so that all bins are covered equally. Then you realize that the solution oscillates, which you can reduce by using a damping factor (called "damping" in my C code). So you do not correct to 499.995ps, but maybe to 499.999ps. If you iterate often enough, the solution kind of stabilizes.

The attached picture shows the result of such a calibration. Green is the effective bin width which in the end only slightly deviates from 500ps. But the "integral temporal nonlinearity" shows a typical shape for the DRS chip. It's defined as

          n
 Ti[n] = Sum (t[i]-500ps)
         i=0

where t[i] is the effective bin width. So Ti[0] is zero by definition, but the deviation around bin 450 can go up to 1ns at 2 GSPS.

Now you can test you calibration, by measuring again the period of your clock. If you do everything correctly and have a low jitter external clock and no noise on your DRS4 power supply voltages, you should see a residual jitter of about 40ps.

Hope this explanation helps a bit. Let me know if I was not clear enough at some points. 

- Stefan

       Reply  Mon Jul 4 05:06:00 2011, Jinhong Wang, Fixed Patter Timing Jitter hist_stoppos.jpg

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Jinhong Wang wrote:

 Hi Stefan, can you give some suggestions on determination of fixed pattern timing jitter of DRS4?  Thanks~

I will prepare some more detailed description of how to do this in the near future, but we are still learning ourselves constantly how to do that better. 


So for the moment I only can recommend you to read the function DRSBoard::CalibrateTiming() and AnalyzeWF(). What you basically do is to define an array of "effective" bin widths t[i]. You start with the nominal bin width (let's say 500ps at 2 GSPS). Now you measure a periodic signal, and look for the zero crossings. If you have a 100 MHz clock, the time between two positive transitions (low-to-high) is 10.000ns. Now you measure the width as seen by the DRS chip, assuming the effective bin widths. The exact zero crossing you interpolate between two samples to improve the accuracy. Now you measure something different, let's say 10.1ns. So you know the ~20 bins between the zero crossings are "too wide", but you don't know which one of them is too wide. So you distribute the "too wide" equally between all bins, that is you decrease the effective width of these bins from 500ps to 500-0.1ns/20=499.995 ps. Then you do this iteratively, that is for all cycles in the waveform, and for many (1000's) of recorded waveforms. It is important that the phase of you measured clock is random, so that all bins are covered equally. Then you realize that the solution oscillates, which you can reduce by using a damping factor (called "damping" in my C code). So you do not correct to 499.995ps, but maybe to 499.999ps. If you iterate often enough, the solution kind of stabilizes.

The attached picture shows the result of such a calibration. Green is the effective bin width which in the end only slightly deviates from 500ps. But the "integral temporal nonlinearity" shows a typical shape for the DRS chip. It's defined as

          n
 Ti[n] = Sum (t[i]-500ps)
         i=0

where t[i] is the effective bin width. So Ti[0] is zero by definition, but the deviation around bin 450 can go up to 1ns at 2 GSPS.

Now you can test you calibration, by measuring again the period of your clock. If you do everything correctly and have a low jitter external clock and no noise on your DRS4 power supply voltages, you should see a residual jitter of about 40ps.

Hope this explanation helps a bit. Let me know if I was not clear enough at some points. 

- Stefan

 Hi, Stefan,

    I noticed other groups of SCA reported the technique to histogram the zero crossings of a sine wave, and use the bin occupancy to derive the effective aperture width.  Recently , I tried this technique to DRS4. In my test, the frequency of the sine wave was selected uncorrelated to the domino frequency.The results were discouraging. Large variations of the domino tap delay was observed.   Besides, I also tried to induce an external trigger, which is uncorrelated to the domino frequency, and histogram the stop positions. Unfortunately, large variations were obtained again. I knew there must be something wrong. Do you have any suggestions?

   The attachment is the histogram of the stop positions (the vertical axis is the bin count, the horizontal axis is the bin number). First, I calculate the ration of each bin count to the total counts, supposed the total count is 10000, count of bin 37 is 12, so the corresponding ratio is 12/10000=0.0012. The bin delay is derived by multiplying its ratio to the whole domino period (1024*1/FSamp, eg., for 5 GSP/s, this period is 200ps *1024). (The bin delay i observed was with an variation of about 30 ps).  If the external trigger is uncorrelated to the domino frequency, so, the stop positions are supposed to distribute equally to all bins? If this is true, can i calculate the bin delay via the histogram ?

   thank you~

                 Wang Jinhong

          Reply  Tue Jul 5 10:09:43 2011, Stefan Ritt, Fixed Patter Timing Jitter nonlinearity.png

Jinhong Wang wrote:

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Jinhong Wang wrote:

 Hi Stefan, can you give some suggestions on determination of fixed pattern timing jitter of DRS4?  Thanks~

I will prepare some more detailed description of how to do this in the near future, but we are still learning ourselves constantly how to do that better. 


So for the moment I only can recommend you to read the function DRSBoard::CalibrateTiming() and AnalyzeWF(). What you basically do is to define an array of "effective" bin widths t[i]. You start with the nominal bin width (let's say 500ps at 2 GSPS). Now you measure a periodic signal, and look for the zero crossings. If you have a 100 MHz clock, the time between two positive transitions (low-to-high) is 10.000ns. Now you measure the width as seen by the DRS chip, assuming the effective bin widths. The exact zero crossing you interpolate between two samples to improve the accuracy. Now you measure something different, let's say 10.1ns. So you know the ~20 bins between the zero crossings are "too wide", but you don't know which one of them is too wide. So you distribute the "too wide" equally between all bins, that is you decrease the effective width of these bins from 500ps to 500-0.1ns/20=499.995 ps. Then you do this iteratively, that is for all cycles in the waveform, and for many (1000's) of recorded waveforms. It is important that the phase of you measured clock is random, so that all bins are covered equally. Then you realize that the solution oscillates, which you can reduce by using a damping factor (called "damping" in my C code). So you do not correct to 499.995ps, but maybe to 499.999ps. If you iterate often enough, the solution kind of stabilizes.

The attached picture shows the result of such a calibration. Green is the effective bin width which in the end only slightly deviates from 500ps. But the "integral temporal nonlinearity" shows a typical shape for the DRS chip. It's defined as

          n
 Ti[n] = Sum (t[i]-500ps)
         i=0

where t[i] is the effective bin width. So Ti[0] is zero by definition, but the deviation around bin 450 can go up to 1ns at 2 GSPS.

Now you can test you calibration, by measuring again the period of your clock. If you do everything correctly and have a low jitter external clock and no noise on your DRS4 power supply voltages, you should see a residual jitter of about 40ps.

Hope this explanation helps a bit. Let me know if I was not clear enough at some points. 

- Stefan

 Hi, Stefan,

    I noticed other groups of SCA reported the technique to histogram the zero crossings of a sine wave, and use the bin occupancy to derive the effective aperture width.  Recently , I tried this technique to DRS4. In my test, the frequency of the sine wave was selected uncorrelated to the domino frequency.The results were discouraging. Large variations of the domino tap delay was observed.   Besides, I also tried to induce an external trigger, which is uncorrelated to the domino frequency, and histogram the stop positions. Unfortunately, large variations were obtained again. I knew there must be something wrong. Do you have any suggestions?

   The attachment is the histogram of the stop positions (the vertical axis is the bin count, the horizontal axis is the bin number). First, I calculate the ration of each bin count to the total counts, supposed the total count is 10000, count of bin 37 is 12, so the corresponding ratio is 12/10000=0.0012. The bin delay is derived by multiplying its ratio to the whole domino period (1024*1/FSamp, eg., for 5 GSP/s, this period is 200ps *1024). (The bin delay i observed was with an variation of about 30 ps).  If the external trigger is uncorrelated to the domino frequency, so, the stop positions are supposed to distribute equally to all bins? If this is true, can i calculate the bin delay via the histogram ?

   thank you~

                 Wang Jinhong

One obvious problem in your method is your statistics. If you have n hits in a bin of the histogram, the error of n is sqrt(n). So if you measure 100 hits, this is more like 100+-10 hits. If you want a better precision, you need much higher statistics. I myself never used this method, but I attach a typical nonlinearity curve running at 2 GSPS, sot hat you know what you should expect. I do some smoothing between neighbor bins so that they do not scatter too much. As you can see, the integral nonlinearity goes almost up to +-2 ns. This value is smaller at higher sampling speeds.

 - Stefan 

             Reply  Tue Jul 12 09:49:08 2011, Jinhong Wang, Fixed Patter Timing Jitter 131MHz.jpg

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Jinhong Wang wrote:

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Jinhong Wang wrote:

 Hi Stefan, can you give some suggestions on determination of fixed pattern timing jitter of DRS4?  Thanks~

I will prepare some more detailed description of how to do this in the near future, but we are still learning ourselves constantly how to do that better. 


So for the moment I only can recommend you to read the function DRSBoard::CalibrateTiming() and AnalyzeWF(). What you basically do is to define an array of "effective" bin widths t[i]. You start with the nominal bin width (let's say 500ps at 2 GSPS). Now you measure a periodic signal, and look for the zero crossings. If you have a 100 MHz clock, the time between two positive transitions (low-to-high) is 10.000ns. Now you measure the width as seen by the DRS chip, assuming the effective bin widths. The exact zero crossing you interpolate between two samples to improve the accuracy. Now you measure something different, let's say 10.1ns. So you know the ~20 bins between the zero crossings are "too wide", but you don't know which one of them is too wide. So you distribute the "too wide" equally between all bins, that is you decrease the effective width of these bins from 500ps to 500-0.1ns/20=499.995 ps. Then you do this iteratively, that is for all cycles in the waveform, and for many (1000's) of recorded waveforms. It is important that the phase of you measured clock is random, so that all bins are covered equally. Then you realize that the solution oscillates, which you can reduce by using a damping factor (called "damping" in my C code). So you do not correct to 499.995ps, but maybe to 499.999ps. If you iterate often enough, the solution kind of stabilizes.

The attached picture shows the result of such a calibration. Green is the effective bin width which in the end only slightly deviates from 500ps. But the "integral temporal nonlinearity" shows a typical shape for the DRS chip. It's defined as

          n
 Ti[n] = Sum (t[i]-500ps)
         i=0

where t[i] is the effective bin width. So Ti[0] is zero by definition, but the deviation around bin 450 can go up to 1ns at 2 GSPS.

Now you can test you calibration, by measuring again the period of your clock. If you do everything correctly and have a low jitter external clock and no noise on your DRS4 power supply voltages, you should see a residual jitter of about 40ps.

Hope this explanation helps a bit. Let me know if I was not clear enough at some points. 

- Stefan

 Hi, Stefan,

    I noticed other groups of SCA reported the technique to histogram the zero crossings of a sine wave, and use the bin occupancy to derive the effective aperture width.  Recently , I tried this technique to DRS4. In my test, the frequency of the sine wave was selected uncorrelated to the domino frequency.The results were discouraging. Large variations of the domino tap delay was observed.   Besides, I also tried to induce an external trigger, which is uncorrelated to the domino frequency, and histogram the stop positions. Unfortunately, large variations were obtained again. I knew there must be something wrong. Do you have any suggestions?

   The attachment is the histogram of the stop positions (the vertical axis is the bin count, the horizontal axis is the bin number). First, I calculate the ration of each bin count to the total counts, supposed the total count is 10000, count of bin 37 is 12, so the corresponding ratio is 12/10000=0.0012. The bin delay is derived by multiplying its ratio to the whole domino period (1024*1/FSamp, eg., for 5 GSP/s, this period is 200ps *1024). (The bin delay i observed was with an variation of about 30 ps).  If the external trigger is uncorrelated to the domino frequency, so, the stop positions are supposed to distribute equally to all bins? If this is true, can i calculate the bin delay via the histogram ?

   thank you~

                 Wang Jinhong

One obvious problem in your method is your statistics. If you have n hits in a bin of the histogram, the error of n is sqrt(n). So if you measure 100 hits, this is more like 100+-10 hits. If you want a better precision, you need much higher statistics. I myself never used this method, but I attach a typical nonlinearity curve running at 2 GSPS, sot hat you know what you should expect. I do some smoothing between neighbor bins so that they do not scatter too much. As you can see, the integral nonlinearity goes almost up to +-2 ns. This value is smaller at higher sampling speeds.

 - Stefan 

 Thank you, Stefan. It is really kind of you to offer suggestions or comments on our concern. 

Recently, we input a sine wave to our DRS board. DRS works at about 5 GS/s. The frequency varies from 131 MHz to 231MHz. The attached picture shows the reconstructed points of sine wave (vertical is the amplitude, horizontal axis is the point numbers). We noticed that the variation of the length of the zero crossing segments is very large. The max. length is perhaps two times the length of the min. I marked in blue color in the picture.  It means the corresponding sampling interval of the max. is two times of that of the min.  If this is true, DNL of the DRS sampling interval would be very large. We know, for uniform sampling, the length of the zero crossing segments are assumed to be uniform.  Do you have any comments? Thank you~

                Reply  Wed Jul 13 04:26:52 2011, Stefan Ritt, Fixed Patter Timing Jitter 

Jinhong Wang wrote:

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Jinhong Wang wrote:

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Jinhong Wang wrote:

 Hi Stefan, can you give some suggestions on determination of fixed pattern timing jitter of DRS4?  Thanks~

I will prepare some more detailed description of how to do this in the near future, but we are still learning ourselves constantly how to do that better. 


So for the moment I only can recommend you to read the function DRSBoard::CalibrateTiming() and AnalyzeWF(). What you basically do is to define an array of "effective" bin widths t[i]. You start with the nominal bin width (let's say 500ps at 2 GSPS). Now you measure a periodic signal, and look for the zero crossings. If you have a 100 MHz clock, the time between two positive transitions (low-to-high) is 10.000ns. Now you measure the width as seen by the DRS chip, assuming the effective bin widths. The exact zero crossing you interpolate between two samples to improve the accuracy. Now you measure something different, let's say 10.1ns. So you know the ~20 bins between the zero crossings are "too wide", but you don't know which one of them is too wide. So you distribute the "too wide" equally between all bins, that is you decrease the effective width of these bins from 500ps to 500-0.1ns/20=499.995 ps. Then you do this iteratively, that is for all cycles in the waveform, and for many (1000's) of recorded waveforms. It is important that the phase of you measured clock is random, so that all bins are covered equally. Then you realize that the solution oscillates, which you can reduce by using a damping factor (called "damping" in my C code). So you do not correct to 499.995ps, but maybe to 499.999ps. If you iterate often enough, the solution kind of stabilizes.

The attached picture shows the result of such a calibration. Green is the effective bin width which in the end only slightly deviates from 500ps. But the "integral temporal nonlinearity" shows a typical shape for the DRS chip. It's defined as

          n
 Ti[n] = Sum (t[i]-500ps)
         i=0

where t[i] is the effective bin width. So Ti[0] is zero by definition, but the deviation around bin 450 can go up to 1ns at 2 GSPS.

Now you can test you calibration, by measuring again the period of your clock. If you do everything correctly and have a low jitter external clock and no noise on your DRS4 power supply voltages, you should see a residual jitter of about 40ps.

Hope this explanation helps a bit. Let me know if I was not clear enough at some points. 

- Stefan

 Hi, Stefan,

    I noticed other groups of SCA reported the technique to histogram the zero crossings of a sine wave, and use the bin occupancy to derive the effective aperture width.  Recently , I tried this technique to DRS4. In my test, the frequency of the sine wave was selected uncorrelated to the domino frequency.The results were discouraging. Large variations of the domino tap delay was observed.   Besides, I also tried to induce an external trigger, which is uncorrelated to the domino frequency, and histogram the stop positions. Unfortunately, large variations were obtained again. I knew there must be something wrong. Do you have any suggestions?

   The attachment is the histogram of the stop positions (the vertical axis is the bin count, the horizontal axis is the bin number). First, I calculate the ration of each bin count to the total counts, supposed the total count is 10000, count of bin 37 is 12, so the corresponding ratio is 12/10000=0.0012. The bin delay is derived by multiplying its ratio to the whole domino period (1024*1/FSamp, eg., for 5 GSP/s, this period is 200ps *1024). (The bin delay i observed was with an variation of about 30 ps).  If the external trigger is uncorrelated to the domino frequency, so, the stop positions are supposed to distribute equally to all bins? If this is true, can i calculate the bin delay via the histogram ?

   thank you~

                 Wang Jinhong

One obvious problem in your method is your statistics. If you have n hits in a bin of the histogram, the error of n is sqrt(n). So if you measure 100 hits, this is more like 100+-10 hits. If you want a better precision, you need much higher statistics. I myself never used this method, but I attach a typical nonlinearity curve running at 2 GSPS, sot hat you know what you should expect. I do some smoothing between neighbor bins so that they do not scatter too much. As you can see, the integral nonlinearity goes almost up to +-2 ns. This value is smaller at higher sampling speeds.

 - Stefan 

 Thank you, Stefan. It is really kind of you to offer suggestions or comments on our concern. 

Recently, we input a sine wave to our DRS board. DRS works at about 5 GS/s. The frequency varies from 131 MHz to 231MHz. The attached picture shows the reconstructed points of sine wave (vertical is the amplitude, horizontal axis is the point numbers). We noticed that the variation of the length of the zero crossing segments is very large. The max. length is perhaps two times the length of the min. I marked in blue color in the picture.  It means the corresponding sampling interval of the max. is two times of that of the min.  If this is true, DNL of the DRS sampling interval would be very large. We know, for uniform sampling, the length of the zero crossing segments are assumed to be uniform.  Do you have any comments? Thank you~

The length of the segments is a combination of the sampling jitter and the voltage noise. If you signal contains some noise (and all signals do) it will translate to timing jitter. The DNL of the DRS sampling interval shows a variation from the mean of typically 30%. After you correct for it, it will of course become much smaller. As I said, some people measured 10 ps timing with the DRS4 after careful timing calibration. 

Entry  Wed Jun 1 09:57:43 2011, Martin Petriska, Removing spikes 

I have DSR4 eval board. Found that there are spikes in channels. Procedure Osc::RemoveSpikes to remove them looks litlle dificult. There is simple way, if you doesnt need to measure all 4 channels.Spikes are in all channels, and it looks like they are same in time and value between channels. To remove them, if you are not using one channel, substract that unused channel with spikes from used channel and your data will be without spikes. If you need all 4 inputs, then may be channel 9 could be substracted.

    Reply  Thu Jun 2 21:01:29 2011, Stefan Ritt, Removing spikes 

Martin Petriska wrote:

I have DSR4 eval board. Found that there are spikes in channels. Procedure Osc::RemoveSpikes to remove them looks litlle dificult. There is simple way, if you doesnt need to measure all 4 channels.Spikes are in all channels, and it looks like they are same in time and value between channels. To remove them, if you are not using one channel, substract that unused channel with spikes from used channel and your data will be without spikes. If you need all 4 inputs, then may be channel 9 could be substracted.

Indeed that's what I had before. If you don't need the 9th channels, you can use it to identify the spikes. But we have applications where we need all 9 channels. That's why I made Osc::RemoveSpikes a bit more complicated, so it will still work when all 9 channels are used. This new version is release 3.1.0. If you just blindly subtract the 9th channel, your noise could increase by a sqrt(2). 

Entry  Fri Feb 25 10:13:51 2011, Stefan Ritt, Announcement digital pulse processing workshop 

Dear colleague,

if you live not so far from Zurich, you might be interested in this workshop:

http://www.xtronix.ch/hep/psi_workshop.htm

This is a combined PSI-CAEN presentation of digitizer hardware including the new V1742 board based on the DRS4 chip. The workshop will also show how digital pulse processing can be used to effectively extract time and energy from detector signals, and thus replace more and more traditional analog electronics. Please register at the above site if you are interested.

Best regards,

    Stefan Ritt

Entry  Sat Feb 19 17:25:29 2011, S S Upadhya, how to synchronize Sampling frequency of two evaluation boards 

 Dear sir,

We have two evaluation boards of DRS4. We would like to use 8 inputs to be recorded on a trigger and we would like to find the relative time difference of inputs. So is it possible to synchronize the sampling frequency of the two evaluation boards. 

with best regards

S S Upadhya

    Reply  Sat Feb 19 22:46:35 2011, Stefan Ritt, how to synchronize Sampling frequency of two evaluation boards 

S S Upadhya wrote:

 Dear sir,

We have two evaluation boards of DRS4. We would like to use 8 inputs to be recorded on a trigger and we would like to find the relative time difference of inputs. So is it possible to synchronize the sampling frequency of the two evaluation boards. 

with best regards

S S Upadhya

No, not in this version. We plan a future version of the evaluation board with clock synchronization, but that board will not be ready before 2-3 months. Anyhow the board is more meant as an evaluation board, to test the chip and develop own electronics, and not to build a complete DAQ system. Note that CAEN distributes now a VME board containing the four DRS4 chips and 32 channels on a board. 

       Reply  Mon Feb 21 08:10:31 2011, Stefan Ritt, how to synchronize Sampling frequency of two evaluation boards 

Stefan Ritt wrote:

S S Upadhya wrote:

 Dear sir,

We have two evaluation boards of DRS4. We would like to use 8 inputs to be recorded on a trigger and we would like to find the relative time difference of inputs. So is it possible to synchronize the sampling frequency of the two evaluation boards. 

with best regards

S S Upadhya

No, not in this version. We plan a future version of the evaluation board with clock synchronization, but that board will not be ready before 2-3 months. Anyhow the board is more meant as an evaluation board, to test the chip and develop own electronics, and not to build a complete DAQ system. Note that CAEN distributes now a VME board containing the four DRS4 chips and 32 channels on a board. 

Well, one thing you can do is to generate an external trigger and send it to the external trigger input of both cards. Then you can determine the time in respect to the trigger point in both boards. But since the trigger cell jitters by 2-3 cells in each chip, the accuracy is limited to about 1-2 ns when running at 2 GS/s. 

          Reply  Mon Feb 21 12:42:33 2011, S S Upadhya, how to synchronize Sampling frequency of two evaluation boards 

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Stefan Ritt wrote:

S S Upadhya wrote:

 Dear sir,

We have two evaluation boards of DRS4. We would like to use 8 inputs to be recorded on a trigger and we would like to find the relative time difference of inputs. So is it possible to synchronize the sampling frequency of the two evaluation boards. 

with best regards

S S Upadhya

No, not in this version. We plan a future version of the evaluation board with clock synchronization, but that board will not be ready before 2-3 months. Anyhow the board is more meant as an evaluation board, to test the chip and develop own electronics, and not to build a complete DAQ system. Note that CAEN distributes now a VME board containing the four DRS4 chips and 32 channels on a board. 

Well, one thing you can do is to generate an external trigger and send it to the external trigger input of both cards. Then you can determine the time in respect to the trigger point in both boards. But since the trigger cell jitters by 2-3 cells in each chip, the accuracy is limited to about 1-2 ns when running at 2 GS/s. 

 

 

 Dear Stefan,

Thanks for the second suggestion. I wanted to do feasibility study of  DRS4 application to our requirement in the experiment 

Thank you again sir,

Upadhya

Entry  Tue May 18 09:24:02 2010, Stefan Ritt, Reference design for DRS4 active input buffer ac.pngac_bw.pngdc.pngdc_bw.pngDRS4_ft_V3.jpg

The design of high frequency differential input stages with the DRS4 is a challenge, since the chip draws quite some current at the input (up to 1 mA at 5 GSPS), which must be sourced by the input buffer. A simple transformer as used in the DRS4 Evaluation Board 2.0 limits the bandwidth to 220 MHz. In meantime two active input stages have been worked out and successfully been tested, both utilizing the THS4508 differential amplifier. The first design is AC-coupled and uses less power, the second design is DC-coupled and uses more power with the benefit of delivering a higher bandwidth.

Both designs use a clamping diode at the input as a protection against high voltage spikes at the input. We used a RCLAMP0502B diode from SEMTECH, but any fast voltage suppressor diode will do the job. 

The CMOFS input to the THS4508 set the common mode of the differential amplifier. In the AC version the level is set to mid-rail (2.5V), in the DC version it's set to 1.8V to match the input range of the DRS4.

The CAL+ and CAL- signals are used to bias the inputs to a well-defined DC level and can also be used to calibrate the chip. For bipolar inputs, they are both set to 0.8V. A positive 0.5V input pulse then drives DRS_IN+ to (0.8+0.25)V = 1.05V and DRS_IN- to (0.8-0.25)V = 0.55V. A negative 0.5V pulse then drives then DRS_IN+ to 0.55V and DRS_IN- to 1.05V. With ROFS=1.6V, the full dynamic range of the DRS4 is then used. Note that the THS4508 has a gain of 2, and the input has a -6dB voltage divider to compensate for that. To use other input ranges, such as -1V...0V, the CAL+ and CAL- signals can be adjusted accordingly. Note that the inputs of the DRS4 must always be between 0.1V and 1.5V.

 

AC-coupled version

ac.png
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     (click to enlarge)

Power supply: +5 V 40 mA

Bandwidth (-3dB): 600 MHz

CMOFS: 2.5 V

Transfer function:

ac_bw.png
                                                                                                                                                            (click to enlarge)

The transfer function was measured by applying a fixed amplitude sine wave to the input, and measuring the peak-to-peak value of the read out waveform with the DRSOsc application.

DC-coupled Version

The DC-coupled version has a slightly higher power consumption since there is a constant current flowing through the output into the DRS4 chip. On the other hand, the bandwidth is a bit higher and the peaking around 400 MHz is a bit smaller. The input is still AC-coupled, so both positive and negative pulses can be accepted. 

dc.png
                                                                                                                                                                                                                             (click to enlarge)

Power supply: +5 V 115 mA

Bandwidth (-3dB): 800 MHz

CMOFS: 1.8 V

Transfer function:

dc_bw.png
                                                                                                                                                              (click to enlarge)

Achievable performance

With the active input stage, much faster rise- and fall times can be achieved. Following picture shows a signal from a external clock having a fall time of about 300 ps being recorded with the AC-coupled version of the active input stage. The fall time of the recorded signal is about 800 ps, which is about the minimum which can be achieved with the AC-coupled version. The DC-coupled version achieves about 700ps.

DRS4_ft_V3.jpg

    Reply  Tue Oct 12 03:53:37 2010, Jinhong Wang, Reference design for DRS4 active input buffer 

Stefan Ritt wrote:

The design of high frequency differential input stages with the DRS4 is a challenge, since the chip draws quite some current at the input (up to 1 mA at 5 GSPS), which must be sourced by the input buffer. A simple transformer as used in the DRS4 Evaluation Board 2.0 limits the bandwidth to 220 MHz. In meantime two active input stages have been worked out and successfully been tested, both utilizing the THS4508 differential amplifier. The first design is AC-coupled and uses less power, the second design is DC-coupled and uses more power with the benefit of delivering a higher bandwidth.

Both designs use a clamping diode at the input as a protection against high voltage spikes at the input. We used a RCLAMP0502B diode from SEMTECH, but any fast voltage suppressor diode will do the job. 

The CMOFS input to the THS4508 set the common mode of the differential amplifier. In the AC version the level is set to mid-rail (2.5V), in the DC version it's set to 1.8V to match the input range of the DRS4.

The CAL+ and CAL- signals are used to bias the inputs to a well-defined DC level and can also be used to calibrate the chip. For bipolar inputs, they are both set to 0.8V. A positive 0.5V input pulse then drives DRS_IN+ to (0.8+0.25)V = 1.05V and DRS_IN- to (0.8-0.25)V = 0.55V. A negative 0.5V pulse then drives then DRS_IN+ to 0.55V and DRS_IN- to 1.05V. With ROFS=1.6V, the full dynamic range of the DRS4 is then used. Note that the THS4508 has a gain of 2, and the input has a -6dB voltage divider to compensate for that. To use other input ranges, such as -1V...0V, the CAL+ and CAL- signals can be adjusted accordingly. Note that the inputs of the DRS4 must always be between 0.1V and 1.5V.

 

AC-coupled version

ac.png
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     (click to enlarge)

Power supply: +5 V 40 mA

Bandwidth (-3dB): 600 MHz

CMOFS: 2.5 V

Transfer function:

ac_bw.png
                                                                                                                                                            (click to enlarge)

The transfer function was measured by applying a fixed amplitude sine wave to the input, and measuring the peak-to-peak value of the read out waveform with the DRSOsc application.

DC-coupled Version

The DC-coupled version has a slightly higher power consumption since there is a constant current flowing through the output into the DRS4 chip. On the other hand, the bandwidth is a bit higher and the peaking around 400 MHz is a bit smaller. The input is still AC-coupled, so both positive and negative pulses can be accepted. 

dc.png
                                                                                                                                                                                                                             (click to enlarge)

Power supply: +5 V 115 mA

Bandwidth (-3dB): 800 MHz

CMOFS: 1.8 V

Transfer function:

dc_bw.png
                                                                                                                                                              (click to enlarge)

Achievable performance

With the active input stage, much faster rise- and fall times can be achieved. Following picture shows a signal from a external clock having a fall time of about 300 ps being recorded with the AC-coupled version of the active input stage. The fall time of the recorded signal is about 800 ps, which is about the minimum which can be achieved with the AC-coupled version. The DC-coupled version achieves about 700ps.

DRS4_ft_V3.jpg

 Hi, stefan,

     In the DC coupled version of the analog drivers for DRS4 input in Eval. Board V3, you mentioned that CMOFS of THS4508 was set to 1.8V to match the input range of DRS4, however, will this clash with the requirements of  DRS4 input voltage between 0.1 V ~1.5V ? The output of THS4508 can easily rise beyond 1.5V for CMOFS=1.8V. I also noticed the resister paris R13/R15, R14/R16 was added among the output of THS4508 and the inputs of DRS4, were these resister pairs were used to attenuate the level of THS4508 output signal (a half ? ) to match the input requirements of DRS4? Maybe I have some misunderstanding about it.

       Reply  Tue Nov 16 16:38:06 2010, Stefan Ritt, Reference design for DRS4 active input buffer 

Jinhong Wang wrote:

 

 Hi, stefan,

 

     In the DC coupled version of the analog drivers for DRS4 input in Eval. Board V3, you mentioned that CMOFS of THS4508 was set to 1.8V to match the input range of DRS4, however, will this clash with the requirements of  DRS4 input voltage between 0.1 V ~1.5V ? The output of THS4508 can easily rise beyond 1.5V for CMOFS=1.8V. I also noticed the resister paris R13/R15, R14/R16 was added among the output of THS4508 and the inputs of DRS4, were these resister pairs were used to attenuate the level of THS4508 output signal (a half ? ) to match the input requirements of DRS4? Maybe I have some misunderstanding about it.

 

No you are right about that. The THS4508 has a gain of +2, and by using the resistor pairs we do

1) Reduce the gain back to unity

2) Reduce the input DC level from 1.8V to 0.9V to match the input range

3) Terminate the signals at the input of the DRS chip to minimize reflections

I know this is not so obvious from the schematic, so thanks for asking.

- Stefan 

Entry  Wed Jul 21 10:46:32 2010, Jinhong Wang, ENOB of DRS 

 Hi, Stefan, I see in your ppt "Design and performance of 6 GSPS waveform digitizing chip DRS4" , you define DRS4 ENOB as 1Vpp/0.35mv(RMS) = 11.5bit, where, 1Vpp is the linearity input range, and 0.35mv is the rms voltage after offset correction. What I understand is that 0.35mV is obtained from DC offset Correction, hence 11.5 bit is for DC input, am i right?  If true, what about ENOB for AC input in the whole analog bandwidth?  thanks~

    Reply  Wed Jul 21 10:58:20 2010, Stefan Ritt, ENOB of DRS 

Jinhong Wang wrote:

 Hi, Stefan, I see in your ppt "Design and performance of 6 GSPS waveform digitizing chip DRS4" , you define DRS4 ENOB as 1Vpp/0.35mv(RMS) = 11.5bit, where, 1Vpp is the linearity input range, and 0.35mv is the rms voltage after offset correction. What I understand is that 0.35mV is obtained from DC offset Correction, hence 11.5 bit is for DC input, am i right?  If true, what about ENOB for AC input in the whole analog bandwidth?  thanks~

The expression ENOB for 1Vpp/0.35mV(RMS) is wrong, but I learned this later. Now I call it SNR. The ENOB is calculated in a more complicated way, see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENOB. If you measure the ENOB without timing correction, it's pretty poor (in the order of 7-8 bits). This is because without timing calibration, a sine input has huge side bands, and the ENOB involves the power of your signal over the power of the side bands. If you do a proper timing calibration, you spectrum gets "sharper", and hence the ENOB increases. But I have to admit that I never measured it carefully, since we are still optimizing the timing calibration. Once we have a perfect timing calibration, I will do it and update the data sheet. 

Entry  Mon Jul 12 16:07:37 2010, Stefan Ritt, Announcement evaluation board V3 eval3.png

Dear DRS4 users,

a new version of the evaluation board has been designed and is in production now. The main difference is that it uses active input amplifiers, which result in an analog bandwidth of 700 MHz (as compared with the 220 MHz of the previous board) at moderate power consumption, so the board can still be powered by the USB port. New orders will receive boards V3, the old V2 boards are not available any more.

It is mandatory to use the software revision 3.0.0 or later with the new board. This software has also many new features in the oscilloscope application, and together with the new firmware it reduces the noise of the board below 0.5 mV RMS. Although the software can be used with old V2 boards, some limitations might apply due to the old firmware of the boards. People having a Xilinx download cable can flash the firmware contained in the 3.0.0 revision to their V2 board to get all features of the new software.

The evaluation board manual V3 contains the new schematics of the analog inputs using the THS4508 differential amplifier, so people doing their own design can use this schematics as and example.

Best regards,

   Stefan Ritt

Entry  Tue Jun 22 10:50:19 2010, Jinhong Wang, Reset of DRS4 

 Hi Stefan, 

      I found DRS draw a lot of current when applied Reset after power on,  and the PLL does not work properly. I believe there was something that I misunderstood. So,  what will happen when Reset is applied more than once after power on? . Though the chip worked well without a Reset,   i want to try to find out what was wrong, for a better understanding of DRS. 

     best regards!

           Jinhong

    Reply  Tue Jun 22 11:02:30 2010, Stefan Ritt, Reset of DRS4 

Jinhong Wang wrote:

 Hi Stefan, 

      I found DRS draw a lot of current when applied Reset after power on,  and the PLL does not work properly. I believe there was something that I misunderstood. So,  what will happen when Reset is applied more than once after power on? . Though the chip worked well without a Reset,   i want to try to find out what was wrong, for a better understanding of DRS. 

     best regards!

           Jinhong

Have you made sure that DENABLE and DWRITE stays low during the reset? 

       Reply  Tue Jun 22 11:29:26 2010, Jinhong Wang, Reset of DRS4 

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Jinhong Wang wrote:

 Hi Stefan, 

      I found DRS draw a lot of current when applied Reset after power on,  and the PLL does not work properly. I believe there was something that I misunderstood. So,  what will happen when Reset is applied more than once after power on? . Though the chip worked well without a Reset,   i want to try to find out what was wrong, for a better understanding of DRS. 

     best regards!

           Jinhong

Have you made sure that DENABLE and DWRITE stays low during the reset? 

 Yes, they are stay low until Reset goes high. the process is as following

   Step1: Reset ='1', DEnable ='0', DWrite ='0', Reg_addr ="1111", Rsload='0', Srin ='0'

  Step2: Reset='0', the others do not change, the low of the pulse is longer than 10 ns.

  Step3: Reset='1', the others do not change, wait for some time

  Step4:  DEnable ='1' to start the domino.

          Reply  Tue Jun 22 11:35:18 2010, Stefan Ritt, Reset of DRS4 

Jinhong Wang wrote:

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Jinhong Wang wrote:

 Hi Stefan, 

      I found DRS draw a lot of current when applied Reset after power on,  and the PLL does not work properly. I believe there was something that I misunderstood. So,  what will happen when Reset is applied more than once after power on? . Though the chip worked well without a Reset,   i want to try to find out what was wrong, for a better understanding of DRS. 

     best regards!

           Jinhong

Have you made sure that DENABLE and DWRITE stays low during the reset? 

 Yes, they are stay low until Reset goes high. the process is as following

   Step1: Reset ='1', DEnable ='0', DWrite ='0', Reg_addr ="1111", Rsload='0', Srin ='0'

  Step2: Reset='0', the others do not change, the low of the pulse is longer than 10 ns.

  Step3: Reset='1', the others do not change, wait for some time

  Step4:  DEnable ='1' to start the domino.

Ok, then I have no idea. I never tried several reset pulses (actually this is not needed), so I have to reproduce the problem myself and investigate it. Actually in all my designs the reset input is just left open, since the internal initial reset is enough, so I have to modify my design first... 

             Reply  Tue Jun 22 11:37:42 2010, Jinhong Wang, Reset of DRS4 

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Jinhong Wang wrote:

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Jinhong Wang wrote:

 Hi Stefan, 

      I found DRS draw a lot of current when applied Reset after power on,  and the PLL does not work properly. I believe there was something that I misunderstood. So,  what will happen when Reset is applied more than once after power on? . Though the chip worked well without a Reset,   i want to try to find out what was wrong, for a better understanding of DRS. 

     best regards!

           Jinhong

Have you made sure that DENABLE and DWRITE stays low during the reset? 

 Yes, they are stay low until Reset goes high. the process is as following

   Step1: Reset ='1', DEnable ='0', DWrite ='0', Reg_addr ="1111", Rsload='0', Srin ='0'

  Step2: Reset='0', the others do not change, the low of the pulse is longer than 10 ns.

  Step3: Reset='1', the others do not change, wait for some time

  Step4:  DEnable ='1' to start the domino.

Ok, then I have no idea. I never tried several reset pulses (actually this is not needed), so I have to reproduce the problem myself and investigate it. Actually in all my designs the reset input is just left open, since the internal initial reset is enough, so I have to modify my design first... 

    Ok ,thank you. 

Entry  Thu May 13 19:14:27 2010, Hao Huan, DVDD Problem of DRS 4 

Hi Stefan,

    on our board some DRS chips draw a lot of current through DVDD after power-up and heat up significantly--it is true that our board doesn't have weak pull-down resistors at DENABLE and DWRITE output pins of FPGA, so this problem might have been caused by that, but a reinitialization of the Domino circuit doesn't help either. We tried different capacitors at DVDD and it seemed the larger the capacitance, the better the result--with a capacitor larger than 10nF some of the DRS chips could work happily in the normal way while if the capacitor is only 4.7nF all of them got very hot. Would you please provide some suggestions why there should be such a problem?

    Thanks a lot!

    Reply  Fri May 14 08:40:14 2010, Stefan Ritt, DVDD Problem of DRS 4 

Hao Huan wrote:

Hi Stefan,

    on our board some DRS chips draw a lot of current through DVDD after power-up and heat up significantly--it is true that our board doesn't have weak pull-down resistors at DENABLE and DWRITE output pins of FPGA, so this problem might have been caused by that, but a reinitialization of the Domino circuit doesn't help either. We tried different capacitors at DVDD and it seemed the larger the capacitance, the better the result--with a capacitor larger than 10nF some of the DRS chips could work happily in the normal way while if the capacitor is only 4.7nF all of them got very hot. Would you please provide some suggestions why there should be such a problem?

    Thanks a lot!

I found that sometimes even a reinitialization fails if the pull-down resistors are missing. So instead playing with capacitors at DVDD, I would just solder two resistors on the board which should fix the problem completely.

       Reply  Tue May 18 01:47:59 2010, Hao Huan, DVDD Problem of DRS 4 

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Hao Huan wrote:

Hi Stefan,

    on our board some DRS chips draw a lot of current through DVDD after power-up and heat up significantly--it is true that our board doesn't have weak pull-down resistors at DENABLE and DWRITE output pins of FPGA, so this problem might have been caused by that, but a reinitialization of the Domino circuit doesn't help either. We tried different capacitors at DVDD and it seemed the larger the capacitance, the better the result--with a capacitor larger than 10nF some of the DRS chips could work happily in the normal way while if the capacitor is only 4.7nF all of them got very hot. Would you please provide some suggestions why there should be such a problem?

    Thanks a lot!

I found that sometimes even a reinitialization fails if the pull-down resistors are missing. So instead playing with capacitors at DVDD, I would just solder two resistors on the board which should fix the problem completely.

 Thanks! After adding pull-down resistors the voltages come back to normal.

However there is another weird problem that arises: a reset pulse seems unable to set the internal shift registers to default values. For example, after reset without addressing the Config Register the PLL will not try to lock with external reference clock. Even if I explicitly address the Config Register after reset and have the PLL locked, some channels of the chip will give null output during readout while other channels work normally. Could it be that some channels are not initiated properly with the Domino circuit?

          Reply  Tue May 18 08:23:07 2010, Stefan Ritt, DVDD Problem of DRS 4 

Hao Huan wrote:

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Hao Huan wrote:

Hi Stefan,

    on our board some DRS chips draw a lot of current through DVDD after power-up and heat up significantly--it is true that our board doesn't have weak pull-down resistors at DENABLE and DWRITE output pins of FPGA, so this problem might have been caused by that, but a reinitialization of the Domino circuit doesn't help either. We tried different capacitors at DVDD and it seemed the larger the capacitance, the better the result--with a capacitor larger than 10nF some of the DRS chips could work happily in the normal way while if the capacitor is only 4.7nF all of them got very hot. Would you please provide some suggestions why there should be such a problem?

    Thanks a lot!

I found that sometimes even a reinitialization fails if the pull-down resistors are missing. So instead playing with capacitors at DVDD, I would just solder two resistors on the board which should fix the problem completely.

 Thanks! After adding pull-down resistors the voltages come back to normal.

However there is another weird problem that arises: a reset pulse seems unable to set the internal shift registers to default values. For example, after reset without addressing the Config Register the PLL will not try to lock with external reference clock. Even if I explicitly address the Config Register after reset and have the PLL locked, some channels of the chip will give null output during readout while other channels work normally. Could it be that some channels are not initiated properly with the Domino circuit?

Something is wrong. I have 800 chips, and they all start up fine. Check with your scope the RESET, DSPEED, DENABLE and DTAP signals. When RESET is applied, DSPEED should go to 2.5 V. When DENABLE goes high, the domino wave is started and you should see DTAP toggle. DSPEED is then lowered by the PLL until DTAP matches your external reference clock. I usually keep DENABLE high all the time after initialization, so the domino wave just continues running.

Another problem could however be the chip readout. If some channel gives null output, it could be that your readout has a problem. Do you use RSRLOAD to initialize the readout sequence?

             Reply  Wed May 19 02:24:12 2010, Hao Huan, DVDD Problem of DRS 4 

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Hao Huan wrote:

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Hao Huan wrote:

Hi Stefan,

    on our board some DRS chips draw a lot of current through DVDD after power-up and heat up significantly--it is true that our board doesn't have weak pull-down resistors at DENABLE and DWRITE output pins of FPGA, so this problem might have been caused by that, but a reinitialization of the Domino circuit doesn't help either. We tried different capacitors at DVDD and it seemed the larger the capacitance, the better the result--with a capacitor larger than 10nF some of the DRS chips could work happily in the normal way while if the capacitor is only 4.7nF all of them got very hot. Would you please provide some suggestions why there should be such a problem?

    Thanks a lot!

I found that sometimes even a reinitialization fails if the pull-down resistors are missing. So instead playing with capacitors at DVDD, I would just solder two resistors on the board which should fix the problem completely.

 Thanks! After adding pull-down resistors the voltages come back to normal.

However there is another weird problem that arises: a reset pulse seems unable to set the internal shift registers to default values. For example, after reset without addressing the Config Register the PLL will not try to lock with external reference clock. Even if I explicitly address the Config Register after reset and have the PLL locked, some channels of the chip will give null output during readout while other channels work normally. Could it be that some channels are not initiated properly with the Domino circuit?

Something is wrong. I have 800 chips, and they all start up fine. Check with your scope the RESET, DSPEED, DENABLE and DTAP signals. When RESET is applied, DSPEED should go to 2.5 V. When DENABLE goes high, the domino wave is started and you should see DTAP toggle. DSPEED is then lowered by the PLL until DTAP matches your external reference clock. I usually keep DENABLE high all the time after initialization, so the domino wave just continues running.

Another problem could however be the chip readout. If some channel gives null output, it could be that your readout has a problem. Do you use RSRLOAD to initialize the readout sequence?

 Yes; I used RSRLOAD to trigger readout of all channels in parallel so the asymmetry between channels of the same chip is really a big puzzle. Also during reset DSPEED indeed goes to 2.5V, but after reset the PLL will not try to lock with the external reference clock and lower DSPEED. Instead the Domino circuit just oscillates at the highest frequency by itself.

A more confusing discovery is that the SRIN level before starting the Domino wave could affect the behavior of the PLL. I mean the level of SRIN when the chip is at A="1111" or "1010". Is SRIN supposed to influence the chip even in these standby or transparent modes?

                Reply  Wed May 19 09:16:02 2010, Stefan Ritt, DVDD Problem of DRS 4 

Hao Huan wrote:

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Hao Huan wrote:

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Hao Huan wrote:

Hi Stefan,

    on our board some DRS chips draw a lot of current through DVDD after power-up and heat up significantly--it is true that our board doesn't have weak pull-down resistors at DENABLE and DWRITE output pins of FPGA, so this problem might have been caused by that, but a reinitialization of the Domino circuit doesn't help either. We tried different capacitors at DVDD and it seemed the larger the capacitance, the better the result--with a capacitor larger than 10nF some of the DRS chips could work happily in the normal way while if the capacitor is only 4.7nF all of them got very hot. Would you please provide some suggestions why there should be such a problem?

    Thanks a lot!

I found that sometimes even a reinitialization fails if the pull-down resistors are missing. So instead playing with capacitors at DVDD, I would just solder two resistors on the board which should fix the problem completely.

 Thanks! After adding pull-down resistors the voltages come back to normal.

However there is another weird problem that arises: a reset pulse seems unable to set the internal shift registers to default values. For example, after reset without addressing the Config Register the PLL will not try to lock with external reference clock. Even if I explicitly address the Config Register after reset and have the PLL locked, some channels of the chip will give null output during readout while other channels work normally. Could it be that some channels are not initiated properly with the Domino circuit?

Something is wrong. I have 800 chips, and they all start up fine. Check with your scope the RESET, DSPEED, DENABLE and DTAP signals. When RESET is applied, DSPEED should go to 2.5 V. When DENABLE goes high, the domino wave is started and you should see DTAP toggle. DSPEED is then lowered by the PLL until DTAP matches your external reference clock. I usually keep DENABLE high all the time after initialization, so the domino wave just continues running.

Another problem could however be the chip readout. If some channel gives null output, it could be that your readout has a problem. Do you use RSRLOAD to initialize the readout sequence?

 Yes; I used RSRLOAD to trigger readout of all channels in parallel so the asymmetry between channels of the same chip is really a big puzzle. Also during reset DSPEED indeed goes to 2.5V, but after reset the PLL will not try to lock with the external reference clock and lower DSPEED. Instead the Domino circuit just oscillates at the highest frequency by itself.

A more confusing discovery is that the SRIN level before starting the Domino wave could affect the behavior of the PLL. I mean the level of SRIN when the chip is at A="1111" or "1010". Is SRIN supposed to influence the chip even in these standby or transparent modes?

Just some ideas:

  • Is DENABLE really kept high all the time?
  • Is DRESET only applied once during initialization, after that it should stay high
  • Does  REFCLK+/REFCLK- really toggle at the required sampling speed / 2048?
  • Is the REFCLK really a good differential signal? Note that it must be biased properly since the DRS4 inputs are high impedance
  • Is the Bit1 in the Config Register really at "1" to enable the PLL?

The only way the SRIN level could affect the PLL is if you address the Config Register (A="1100") and you clock in a few bits with SRCLK.

Have you thought about 'crazy' things such as:

  • Defining the DRS4 chip wronly in your CAD software so that the pins are different from what you think?
  • Some soldering problem of the DRS4 chips (we had this in the past) so that some pins are not connected at all and others have shorts

I guess you checked most of the things, so I'm just wildly guessing in order to stimulate some thoughts.

The ultimate check would be to get one of the evaluation boards (I sent a few to Jean-Francois Genat some time ago...) and compare the DRS4 signals pin by pin.

                   Reply  Fri Jun 18 11:31:20 2010, Jinhong Wang, DVDD Problem of DRS 4 

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Hao Huan wrote:

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Hao Huan wrote:

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Hao Huan wrote:

Hi Stefan,

    on our board some DRS chips draw a lot of current through DVDD after power-up and heat up significantly--it is true that our board doesn't have weak pull-down resistors at DENABLE and DWRITE output pins of FPGA, so this problem might have been caused by that, but a reinitialization of the Domino circuit doesn't help either. We tried different capacitors at DVDD and it seemed the larger the capacitance, the better the result--with a capacitor larger than 10nF some of the DRS chips could work happily in the normal way while if the capacitor is only 4.7nF all of them got very hot. Would you please provide some suggestions why there should be such a problem?

    Thanks a lot!

I found that sometimes even a reinitialization fails if the pull-down resistors are missing. So instead playing with capacitors at DVDD, I would just solder two resistors on the board which should fix the problem completely.

 Thanks! After adding pull-down resistors the voltages come back to normal.

However there is another weird problem that arises: a reset pulse seems unable to set the internal shift registers to default values. For example, after reset without addressing the Config Register the PLL will not try to lock with external reference clock. Even if I explicitly address the Config Register after reset and have the PLL locked, some channels of the chip will give null output during readout while other channels work normally. Could it be that some channels are not initiated properly with the Domino circuit?

Something is wrong. I have 800 chips, and they all start up fine. Check with your scope the RESET, DSPEED, DENABLE and DTAP signals. When RESET is applied, DSPEED should go to 2.5 V. When DENABLE goes high, the domino wave is started and you should see DTAP toggle. DSPEED is then lowered by the PLL until DTAP matches your external reference clock. I usually keep DENABLE high all the time after initialization, so the domino wave just continues running.

Another problem could however be the chip readout. If some channel gives null output, it could be that your readout has a problem. Do you use RSRLOAD to initialize the readout sequence?

 Yes; I used RSRLOAD to trigger readout of all channels in parallel so the asymmetry between channels of the same chip is really a big puzzle. Also during reset DSPEED indeed goes to 2.5V, but after reset the PLL will not try to lock with the external reference clock and lower DSPEED. Instead the Domino circuit just oscillates at the highest frequency by itself.

A more confusing discovery is that the SRIN level before starting the Domino wave could affect the behavior of the PLL. I mean the level of SRIN when the chip is at A="1111" or "1010". Is SRIN supposed to influence the chip even in these standby or transparent modes?

Just some ideas:

  • Is DENABLE really kept high all the time?
  • Is DRESET only applied once during initialization, after that it should stay high
  • Does  REFCLK+/REFCLK- really toggle at the required sampling speed / 2048?
  • Is the REFCLK really a good differential signal? Note that it must be biased properly since the DRS4 inputs are high impedance
  • Is the Bit1 in the Config Register really at "1" to enable the PLL?

The only way the SRIN level could affect the PLL is if you address the Config Register (A="1100") and you clock in a few bits with SRCLK.

Have you thought about 'crazy' things such as:

  • Defining the DRS4 chip wronly in your CAD software so that the pins are different from what you think?
  • Some soldering problem of the DRS4 chips (we had this in the past) so that some pins are not connected at all and others have shorts

I guess you checked most of the things, so I'm just wildly guessing in order to stimulate some thoughts.

The ultimate check would be to get one of the evaluation boards (I sent a few to Jean-Francois Genat some time ago...) and compare the DRS4 signals pin by pin.

 Hi Stefan

       I designed the evaluation board for our experiment. On our boards, I  encountered the similar problem when working on the PLL of DRS4. I compared the following two configuration process, which on with PLL locked, the other not,

   Process1: 

       step 1: Set DEnable and DWrite low, 

      Step2 : Reset DRS4 with a negative pulse of about 900 ns

      Step3: Set DEnable high,  thus do nothing but wait

       I found DRS4 PLL working and locked. 

  

  Process 2:

   Step 1: Set DEnable and DWrite low, 

  Step2 : Reset DRS4 with a negative pulse of about 900 ns 

  Step3: Set Config. Register( "11111111" .of course, this step was not necessary, just to see whether SPI was working properly from DTAP when set to "11111110")

  Step4: Set The read shift Register ( full read out mode)

  Step5: Set DEnable high, 

  Step6: Set DWrite high  , thus low it , and prepare to read the waveform.

  Well, I found in this case, the PLL was not locked, I am sure there was no problem with my SPI configuration process of DRS4. 

  toggle from DTAP could be viewed, but not stable. 

 Any Suggestions ?

  thanks.

                      Reply  Fri Jun 18 11:45:18 2010, Stefan Ritt, DVDD Problem of DRS 4 

Jinhong Wang wrote:

 

 Hi Stefan

       I designed the evaluation board for our experiment. On our boards, I  encountered the similar problem when working on the PLL of DRS4. I compared the following two configuration process, which on with PLL locked, the other not,

   Process1: 

       step 1: Set DEnable and DWrite low, 

      Step2 : Reset DRS4 with a negative pulse of about 900 ns

      Step3: Set DEnable high,  thus do nothing but wait

       I found DRS4 PLL working and locked. 

  

  Process 2:

   Step 1: Set DEnable and DWrite low, 

  Step2 : Reset DRS4 with a negative pulse of about 900 ns 

  Step3: Set Config. Register( "11111111" .of course, this step was not necessary, just to see whether SPI was working properly from DTAP when set to "11111110")

  Step4: Set The read shift Register ( full read out mode)

  Step5: Set DEnable high, 

  Step6: Set DWrite high  , thus low it , and prepare to read the waveform.

  Well, I found in this case, the PLL was not locked, I am sure there was no problem with my SPI configuration process of DRS4. 

  toggle from DTAP could be viewed, but not stable. 

 Any Suggestions ?

  thanks.

So the main difference, if I understand correctly, is the setting of the Config Register. Actually I never tried that, I always went with the default settings (all "1"). What happens if you write "00000000"? You know Bit1 controls the PLL, maybe there is a bug and the signal needs to be inverted. 

                         Reply  Sat Jun 19 10:09:18 2010, Jinhong Wang, DVDD Problem of DRS 4 

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Jinhong Wang wrote:

 

 Hi Stefan

       I designed the evaluation board for our experiment. On our boards, I  encountered the similar problem when working on the PLL of DRS4. I compared the following two configuration process, which on with PLL locked, the other not,

   Process1: 

       step 1: Set DEnable and DWrite low, 

      Step2 : Reset DRS4 with a negative pulse of about 900 ns

      Step3: Set DEnable high,  thus do nothing but wait

       I found DRS4 PLL working and locked. 

  

  Process 2:

   Step 1: Set DEnable and DWrite low, 

  Step2 : Reset DRS4 with a negative pulse of about 900 ns 

  Step3: Set Config. Register( "11111111" .of course, this step was not necessary, just to see whether SPI was working properly from DTAP when set to "11111110")

  Step4: Set The read shift Register ( full read out mode)

  Step5: Set DEnable high, 

  Step6: Set DWrite high  , thus low it , and prepare to read the waveform.

  Well, I found in this case, the PLL was not locked, I am sure there was no problem with my SPI configuration process of DRS4. 

  toggle from DTAP could be viewed, but not stable. 

 Any Suggestions ?

  thanks.

So the main difference, if I understand correctly, is the setting of the Config Register. Actually I never tried that, I always went with the default settings (all "1"). What happens if you write "00000000"? You know Bit1 controls the PLL, maybe there is a bug and the signal needs to be inverted. 

 Hi, Stefan,

       The problem was fixed by setting Reg_addr "1001" instead of "1111" when in idle state, I was confused. 

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