  This work presents the design and performance study of compact strips of
plastic scintillator with WLS-fiber readout in a dimension of 0.1 * 0.02 * 2
m3, which evaluates as a candidate for cosmic-ray muon detector for JUNO-TAO.
The strips coupling with 3-inch PMTs are measured and compared between the
single-end and double-end readout options first, and the strip of double-end
option coupling with SiPM is further measured and compared with the results of
that with the PMTs. The performance of the strips determined by a detailed
survey along their length with cosmic-ray muon after a detailed
characterization of the used 3-inch PMTs and SiPMs.The proposed compact strip
of plastic scintillator with WLS-fiber coupling with SiPM provides a good
choice for cosmic-ray muon veto detector for limited detector dimension in
particular.
