A Fast Multiwire Proportional Chamber Data Encoding System for Proton Tomography

A data encoding system that rapidly generates the binary address of an active wire in a 512-wire multiwire proportional chamber has been developed. It can accept a second event on a different wire after a deadtime of 130 ns. The system incorporates preprocessing of the wire data to reject events that would require more than one wire address. It also includes a first-in, first-out memory to buffer the data flow.