High Performances and Low Cost Front-End Electronics for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The current Imaging Arrays of Cherenkov Telescopes (IACT) show that this technique is mature. Front‐end electronics based on analogue pipelines become a popular readout solution. Slow noise and low power consumption ASICs were developed with improved dynamical range and linearity. A large bandwidth preserves the characteristics of the signal and fast readout reduces dead time. Next generation of IACT should reach an order of magnitude in sensitivity in a wide energy band, ranging from 10 GeV to more than 100 TeV. This goal can be reached with an array of 50–100 telescopes of various sizes at various spacings. With about 2 000 channels per camera a significant effort must be done to lower the overall cost and improve the performances of the electronics. Mass production will be determinant for lowering the overall cost. A gain in cost and performances can be obtained by maximising the integration of the front‐end electronics in an ASIC. The amplifiers, analogue memories, digitization and first level bufferi...