Application of the bilinear compression function to calorimetry

The energy dynamic range required by a calorimeter may exceed, if high speed is also required, the technical limitations of available ADCs. In this case the use of a dynamic compressor matching the energy range to the ADC range may be an adequate solution. The requirement for the compression function is to add an appropriately small quantization error to the calorimeter resolution. The bilinear compression function is easy to realize, it is therefore interesting to study the conditions under which it is adequate and which are the parameters of the compression curve, the slope ratio and the break point, minimizing the additional error due to quantization.