Data acquisition electronics for NESTOR experiment: project and tests

The NESTOR detector. at present under construction, is a telescope for high-energy neutrino astronomy. The apparatus, based on Cherenkov light detection, will be deployed in deep sea (about 4000 m) near the S.W. Greek coast. We briefly describe the NESTOR detector, then we describe with more details the electronics for NESTOR data acquisition and transmission. The detector signals are sampled at 200 MHz and all the resulting information are transmitted to the laboratory on 30 km long electro-optical cable. The estimated Mean Time Between Failure of the full electronics system is greater than 20 years. Tests performed on the first prototypes confirm the main characteristics of these electronics: the dynamic range allowed for the signals is bigger than 1000, the pulse shape is reconstructed with an 8 bit ADC accuracy and the resolution in the measurement, of the signal "threshold crossing time" is better than 200 ps. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.