Multimode Acquisition System Dedicated to Experimental Neutronic Physics

A new data acquisition system dedicated to neutronic experiments in nuclear reactors is presented. Its main purpose is to integrate in a single system all features needed to perform digital and analogic acquisitions, such as kinetics experiments, time correlations of events, fluctuations analysis or pile noise measurements. Moreover, it has been designed to perform complex experiment such as synchronous acquisition or triggered experiments. In order to achieve those goals, it is equipped with two newly developed acquisition cards based on FPGA circuits. They can acquire and process up to 32 digital signals and 8 analogic signals. In digital mode, the system is able to count and time-mark TTL events up to 10 MHz for all channels. In analogic mode, it can sample signals at adjustable frequency and perform pulse height analysis. Finally, the system generates 4 channels of TTL periodical or random signals. One can use those signals for testing purposes or as time reference signals. In this paper, sketches of the main functions are detailed. Then, an experimental result is presented in order to enhance the interest of the time marking mode of the system