A stand-alone 3D muon tracking system based on Silicon Photomultipliers

We present a muon tracking system based on the use of plastic scintillator strips and Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs). Originally intended to be used mainly in outreach activities, the detector became an effective instrument to perform muon flux intensity measurements and for muon transmission imaging applications. It consists of two independent orthogonal views, each one made of 10 planes and containing 10 detection channels per plane. A custom electronics has been designed to bias and readout all the 200 SiPMs in the detector, to generate the trigger logic pattern and to control the working parameters. Thanks to an on-board data acquisition system, standalone data taking is possible with the addition of a computer. Commissioning and performance of the detector are presented, along with preliminary results concerning the first data taking on Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi, with the aim of measuring the local cosmic ray flux and to assess its muon transmission imaging capability.