@article {74, title = {Intelligent Front-end Electronics for Silicon photodetectors (IFES)}, journal = {Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment}, volume = {819}, year = {2016}, pages = {163 - 166}, abstract = {Abstract While high channel density can be easily achieved for big experiments using custom made microchips, providing something similar for small and medium size experiments imposes a challenge. Within this work we describe a novel and cost effective solution to operate silicon photodetectors such as silicon photo multipliers (SiPM). The {\.I}FES\} modules provide the bias voltage for the detectors, a leading edge discriminator featuring time over threshold and a differential amplifier, all on one printed circuit board. We demonstrate under realistic conditions that the module is usable for high resolution timing measurements exploiting both charge and time information. Furthermore we show that the modules can be easily used in larger detector arrays. All in all this confirms that the {\.I}FES\} modules are a viable option for a broad range of experiments if cost-effectiveness and small form factor are required.}, keywords = {Silicon photomultiplier}, issn = {0168-9002}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2016.02.098}, url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168900216300158}, author = {Clemens Sauerzopf and Lukas Gruber and Ken Suzuki and Johann Zmeskal and Eberhard Widmann} }