Implementation of FPGA based real-time digital DAQ for high resolution, and high count rate nuclear spectroscopy application

This paper investigates a digital system for real-time nuclear data (pulse) analysis based on a field programmable gate array and a computer-based data acquisition software for high count rate and high-resolution spectroscopy applications. A novel FPGA-based design is proposed with enhanced universality for real-time energy spectroscopy applications encompassing gamma and charged particles in noisy environments. This design implements an adaptive digital pre-filter for noise reduction without distorting the preamplifier pulse shape for improvement in energy resolution. This adaptive approach can be used for a wide range of input pulses with varying rise and fall times without deteriorating the signal-to-noise ratio. The design incorporates a digital trapezoidal filter with a triggerless peak detection algorithm for improvement in energy resolution. A high-speed dual clock first-in-first-out memory is implemented for handling high data rates. The real-time analysis of the FPGA internal signals and nuclear spectroscopy experiments with high count rate have been carried out with random nuclear pulses using an emulator. The results have been compared with conventional VERSA-Module Euro data acquisition system and CR_RC based digital pulse processing approaches.