The Development of a Field Programmable Gate Array for Radiation Detection
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Date
2023-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
The development of the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) has led to cheaper, configurable, but still computationally complex hardware development. They are considered both computationally powerful enough to take on computationally difficult tasks while providing a framework that provides high flexibility for developers. The purpose of this thesis is to provide the developmental framework and implementation of digital pulse processing for the detection of a gamma spectrum from a Cs-137 source. Currently, analog systems are used to do pulse shaping and discrimination for gamma spectroscopy. These systems are both expensive and not easily configurable. By using an FPGA, this workflow can be reduced to a detector, photomultiplier tube, and FPGA that contains an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). Verilog code for FPGA was written to utilize common pulse filtering methods such as trapezoidal and derivative filters. Simulation code has shown that processing of single waveforms can be done on FPGA within 101 microseconds. Although these results are promising, furthermore developments need to correct pulse pile-up that can occur to reduce processing efficiency.
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Keywords
FPGA, gamma spectroscopy, radiation detection, pulse processing