Athena: a 192-Channel Analog Pulse Processing and Data Acquisition Platform

The low-noise readout of large pixellated detectors, especially when the number grows into the hundreds, represents a challenge for both front-end and back-end electronics. The TRISTAN project for keV-scale sterile neutrino search is planning to install a 3486-pixel Silicon Drift Detector (SDD) matrix into KATRIN experiment spectrometer. The matrix will be divided into 21 modules of 166 monolithical SDDs each. In this paper, we present Athena, a 192-channel Analog Pulse Processing and Data Acquisition platform that will be used for the characterisation of the TRISTAN detectors. The analog processing operations are carried out by the SFERA ASIC, that is tasked with the signal shaping and multiplexing, while the Kerberos platform manages the events acquisition. The back-end operations are performed by Athena platform, that acts as global trigger and event builder for up to 4 Kerberos. Athena provides a compact and scalable multi-channel solution for large SDD arrays, making possible the simultaneous readout of all 166 pixels of its target detector with a 60 MB/s maximum output data rate.