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Towards a portable high-resolution muon detector based on Resistive Plate Chambers

The use of conventional imaging techniques becomes problematic when faced with challenging logistics and confined environments. In particular, such scenarios are not unusual in the field of archaeological and mining explorations as well as for nuclear waste characterization. For these applications, even the use of muography is complicated since the detectors have to be deployed in difficult areas with limited room for instrumentation, e.g., narrow tunnels. To address this limitation, we have developed a portable muon detector (muoscope) based on glass Resistive Plate Chambers (RPC) with an active area of 16 $\times$ 16 cm$^{2}$. The specific design goals taken into consideration while developing our first prototype are portability, robustness, autonomy, versatility, safety and low cost. To help further improve our design goals, we are currently studying the possibility to switch the sensitive units from strips in the old prototype to pixels for the new one However, for performing high resolution muography, the number of readout units per layer will also need to increase significantly, leading to increase in the overall cost and power consumption of the muoscope. To mitigate these issues, we are developing a novel 2D multiplexing algorithm for reading out several pixels with a single electronic channel. In this article, we give an overview of the detector development, focusing mainly on the design goals and the choice of detector technology. Furthermore, we present the details of the expected changes in the new prototype as well as a simulated 2D multiplexing study based on general principles.