Design and performance of the readout electronics chain of the Delphi forward ring imaging Cherenkov detector

The front-end readout electronics chain of the forward ring imaging Cherenkov (FRICH) detector used at the Delphi experiment of the Large Electron-Positron collider (LEP) is presented. The system incorporates a wideband low-noise preamplifier, mounted in the proximity of the multiwire proportional chamber, an amplifying discriminating-multiplexing FASTBUS unit for further signal amplification, discrimination, and channel reduction, and a LEP time digitizer FASTBUS unit for time digitization. The authors give a general view of the detector and its electronics with particular emphasis on the novel characteristics and capabilities of the system.< >