Anode and cathode readout electronics for cylindrical multiwire proportional chambers of the PIBETA detector

The cathode amplifier is intended to amplify the positive current pulses from the cathode strips of proportional chambers and drive the 50 Ohm coaxial cable. The amplifier gain and the output voltage swing are matched for operation with the LeCroy 1882F ADC. The special feature of the anode system is the integration of the amplifying section, signal delay unit and digital section for the data outputting to computer in the common ADD-32 module (CAMAC). The 1M-wide ADD-32 module contains the electronics for 32 wires that makes it possible to place up to 672 data channels in the CAMAC crate with a standard bus. To amplify signals, Amp1 8.3 8-channel microcircuits are used. The output logic signals are delayed by 9-channel IDT72421 FIFO microcircuits that enables one to obtain a total signal delay of up to hundreds of microseconds and longer. The digital section of the system is based on ALTERA programmable logic arrays. This system with a total of 576 channels is used in the PIBETA experiment to study rare pion decays on the PSI accelerator (Switzerland)