A study of the real-time deconvolution of digitized waveforms with pulse pile up for digital radiation spectroscopy

Two new real-time approaches have been developed and compared to the least-squares fit approach for the deconvolution of experimental waveforms with pile-up pulses. The single pulse shape chosen is typical for scintillators such as LSO and NaI(Tl). Simulated waveforms with pulse pile up were also generated and deconvolved to compare these three different approaches under cases where the single pulse component has a constant shape and the digitization error dominates. The effects of temporal separation and amplitude ratio between pile-up component pulses were also investigated and statistical tests were applied to quantify the consistency of deconvolution results for each case. Monte Carlo simulation demonstrated that applications of these pile-up deconvolution techniques to radiation spectroscopy are effective in extending the counting-rate range while preserving energy resolution for scintillation detectors.