ABSTRACT
Several motivations suggest that most of the applications can benefit from the use of application-specific integrated circuit readouts instead of discrete solutions. Miniaturization, low power dissipation, and low-noise performance are stringent requests in modern instrumentation where portability and constant increase of channel numbers are the main streamlines. The charge-sensitive preamplifier is commonly implemented using a folded-cascode structure, built of transistors M1, M2, and M4. This architecture provides a high direct current gain and a relatively large operating bandwidth. Semi-Gaussian pulse-shaping filters are the most common pulse shapers that are employed in readout systems; their use in electronics spectrometer instruments is to measure the energy of charge particles, and their purpose is to provide a voltage pulse whose height is proportional to the energy of the detected particle. The chapter describes Leapfrog operational transconductance amplifier -based architecture. Although it is a low-frequency-region-operating bandwidth, it is fully integrated and is characterized by low-power and –noise.
