Electronics Simulation

RF Filter

Sweeps of the RF filter bandwidth were simulated to see the effect on the signal to noise ratio, the signal rise time and the maximum signal level. An absolute maximum bandwidth for the electronics is 400MHz coming from the intermediate frequency of 200MHz. The signal to noise ratio goes as the square root of the filter bandwidth as expected.

The maximum signal level is slightly reduced with decreasing filter bandwidth but not by much and not enough to effect the signal to noise ratio.

The rise time of the multibunch waveform is dominated by the bunch structure and not the bandwidth of the filter until you get to a threshold value when it begins to increase rapidly. This should not be a problem for the first set of electronics but it may become important if a slower, higher resolution digitiser is chosen.

Amplifier

A low noise amplifier that provided 1dB compression up to +27dBm corresponding to the +/-5V full scale of the digitiser was hard to find. However, there are amplifiers that have a +19dBm compression point that would work with the +/-2V full scale of the digitiser.