Project number: NOR/SGS/Intelligent_XRay_Det/0196/2020-00

Contest: SMALL GRANT SCHEME Call

Funding: Project funded by EEA and Norway Grants and by the National Center for Research and Development in Poland

Budget: 181,310.71 euro

Lead time: 2022 - 2023

Popular science short description of the project:

The idea of the intelligent sensor design was proposed long ago, however, there were no tools and methods allowing for reliable on-chip implementation. Utilizing deep sub-micron technologies like CMOS 28 nm allows for dense on-chip logic synthetizing and therefore gives an opportunity for artificial neural network (ANN) placing as close to the signal as possible. Even though ANNs are mostly used for much bigger problems in biology and physics where they are big, complex and require enormous computation power, the PI claims that for simple signal processing like pattern recognition of low-level signals they are small enough to fit into an IC.

X-ray detectors are on the continuous race for better energy resolution and higher speed. Scientific groups around the world like CERN, PSI, Fermilab, SPring-8 are reaching limits of the theoretical values, but still scientists using those detectors want to have more precise numbers. The traditional way used by most groups is to overcomplicate the circuit schematics by adding more and more circuits which are mostly used for compensation of integrated circuits imperfections in various stages of the signal processing path. In contrast to this approach, the PI is proposing to use an artificial neural network to compensate for moderate parameters of the sensor quality and moderate front-end signal processing parameters.