A readout system for plastic scintillating fibers

A readout system for plastic scintillating fibers has been developed using a multi-anode microchannel photomultiplier tube operated in a 5 kG magnetic field and the CMOS MX4 microplexer chip. The microchannel photomultiplier tube with an anode array of 10×10 is coupled to an array of fibers using a precise alignment procedure. Each readout unit is capable of sampling signals from 100 fibers simultaneously and multiplexing the analog signals serially with rates of up to 5 MHz. The analog signals are subsequently digitized and subtracted from the pedestals previously stored using a specially designed analog to digital VME module. Such a readout system has many applications in high energy physics, solid state physics, and other fields where a large number of fibers must be read out in short times and at relatively high rates.