Precise Tracking of Cosmic Muons using Time over Threshold property of NINO ASICs

Abstract

This work reports a cost-effective, simple front-end readout and DAQ of a RPC-based muon scattering tomography system under construction. The Time-over-threshold property of NINO ASICs has been exploited to achieve precise tracking by extraction of position information. The use of a low-cost FPGA for event selection and TOT measurement has been demonstrated for a prototype RPC which has been triggered by a cosmic ray hodoscope of three plastic scintillators. The relation between input pulse width and TOT has been established by analyzing the waveforms of the RPC signals. The TOT profile at different working voltages has been obtained by the FPGA and it has been fitted with the Gaussian distribution. Its standard deviation represents an estimate of the tracking precision.