Development of a 24 ch TDC LSI for the ATLAS Muon Detector

A prototype TDC LSI for the ATLAS precision muon tracker (MDT) has been developed. The LSI was processed in a 0.3 µm CMOS Gate-Array technology. It contains full functionality required in the final TDC. To get a high resolution around 300 ps, an asymmetric ring oscillator and a PLL circuit are used. All the I/O signals, which are active during measurement, have LVDS interfaces. A JTAG interface is used for boundary scan and internal register setup. All the memory and control bits have parity bits so that a SEU can be detected. Radiation tolerance for Gamma ray and Neutron are also confirmed. ATLAS precision muon tracker (MDT) requires high