Rights statement: © 2017 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Accepted author manuscript, 681 KB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Real-time capabilities of a digital analyzer for mixed-field assay using scintillation detectors
AU - Aspinall, Michael
AU - Joyce, Malcolm John
AU - Lavietes, Anthony
AU - Plenteda, Romano
AU - Cave, Francis Dominic
AU - Parker, Helen Maria
AU - Jones, Ashley Richard
AU - Astromskas, Vytautas
N1 - © 2017 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
PY - 2017/3
Y1 - 2017/3
N2 - Scintillation detectors offer a single-step detection method for fast neutrons and necessitate real-time acquisition, whereas this is redundant in two-stage thermal detection systems using helium-3 and lithium-6, where the fast neutrons need to be thermalized prior to detection. The relative affordability of scintillation detectors and the associated fast digital acquisition systems have enabled entirely new measurement setups that can consist of sizeable detector arrays. These detectors in most cases rely on photo-multiplier tubes which have significant tolerances and result in variations in detector response functions. The detector tolerances and other environmental instabilities must be accounted for in measurements that depend on matched detector performance. This paper presents recent advances made to a high-speed FPGA-based digitizer. The technology described offers a complete solution for fast-neutron scintillation detectorsby integrating multichannel high-speed data acquisition technology with dedicated detector high-voltage supplies. This configuration has significant advantages for large detector arrays that require uniform detector responses. We report on bespoke control software and firmware techniques that exploit realtime functionality to reduce setup and acquisition time, increaserepeatability and reduce statistical uncertainties.
AB - Scintillation detectors offer a single-step detection method for fast neutrons and necessitate real-time acquisition, whereas this is redundant in two-stage thermal detection systems using helium-3 and lithium-6, where the fast neutrons need to be thermalized prior to detection. The relative affordability of scintillation detectors and the associated fast digital acquisition systems have enabled entirely new measurement setups that can consist of sizeable detector arrays. These detectors in most cases rely on photo-multiplier tubes which have significant tolerances and result in variations in detector response functions. The detector tolerances and other environmental instabilities must be accounted for in measurements that depend on matched detector performance. This paper presents recent advances made to a high-speed FPGA-based digitizer. The technology described offers a complete solution for fast-neutron scintillation detectorsby integrating multichannel high-speed data acquisition technology with dedicated detector high-voltage supplies. This configuration has significant advantages for large detector arrays that require uniform detector responses. We report on bespoke control software and firmware techniques that exploit realtime functionality to reduce setup and acquisition time, increaserepeatability and reduce statistical uncertainties.
U2 - 10.1109/TNS.2017.2654512
DO - 10.1109/TNS.2017.2654512
M3 - Journal article
VL - 64
SP - 945
EP - 950
JO - IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science
JF - IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science
SN - 0018-9499
IS - 3
ER -