DPP-DAW

The Dynamic Acquisition Window (DPP-DAW) firmware has been developed to improve the zero suppression capabilities of the CAEN 724, 725 and 730 digitizer family and allow the user for trigger-less acquisition systems. By running the DPP-DAW firmware, each channel of the digitizer is able to self-trigger and acquire data independently from the others.

DPP-DAW can dynamically adjust the record length of every triggered event according to its Time Over Threshold to fit the actual duration of the input pulses. This prevents that a pulse larger than expected gets chopped because of a too short acquisition window. The user can set a minimum record length, a pre-trigger and a time of under-threshold to acquire those samples of interest before and after the Time Over Threshold. This allows for a full reconstruction of the digitized pulses.

DPP-DAW is able to continuously evaluate the signal baseline and refer a trigger threshold to its value. Therefore, the threshold can follow the baseline drift of the input signal without changing the trigger conditions of the data acquisition system.

DPP-DAW can accept an external veto to inhibit the data acquisition. A programmable input delay is available to compensate for the latency due to the veto generation if managed by an external logic unit.

CAEN provides open source demo software (DPP-DAW Demo Software) for a first approach to the DPP-DAW algorithm principles and basic control of the digitizer. The DPP-DAW Demo software can also control and acquire data from multiple synchronized boards.

Applications

• Neutrino experiments

• Large number of detectors

• Drift chambers, TPC, Cherenkov detectors

• Application requiring an effective data reduction