Design of a constant fraction discriminator for the VFAT3 front-end ASIC of the CMS GEM detector

: In this work the design of a constant fraction discriminator (CFD) to be used in the VFAT3 chip for the read-out of the triple-GEM detectors of the CMS experiment, is described. A prototype chip containing 8 CFDs was implemented using 130 nm CMOS technology and test results are shown.