Multiplexed SiPM Readout of Plastic Scintillating Fiber Detector for Muon Tomography

Abstract

Muon tomography is a non-destructive imaging technique that uses cosmic-ray muons to probe dense materials. Bar scintillator and scintillating fiber detectors equipped with one-dimensional SiPM arrays offer compact, high-resolution solutions, but large-area implementations require effective reduction of readout channels while preserving detector performance. To address this challenge, we present a novel multiplexing scheme based on a diode-based symmetric charge division circuit combined with a position-encoding algorithm, enabling up to $N_{\textrm{SiPM}}^{\textrm{max}}=C^{2}_{N_{\textrm{ele}}}$ SiPM channels to be read out using only ${N_{\textrm{ele}}}$ electronic channels. Circuit simulations confirm the feasibility of the multiplexing design and guide the choice of appropriate diodes to preserve SiPM signal integrity. The approach was validated using a SciFi detector module comprising 21 SiPM channels multiplexed into 7 electronic channels. Electronic tests show that this multiplexing circuit exhibits low crosstalk between electronic channels, and preserves linearity over a dynamic range from $\sim$10 to 122 photoelectrons. Cosmic-ray measurements further show that the multiplexed SciFi detector achieves a detection efficiency above 95\% and a spatial resolution of about 0.65~mm, with only minor degradation compared to the direct (per SiPM channel) readout. These results verify that the proposed method provides a scalable and cost-effective readout solution for large-area muon tomography systems and is applicable to other scintillator-based detectors employing similar one-dimensional SiPM array readout.