Development and testing of a flash analog-to-digital converter based system for pulse shape discrimination of nuclear radiation pulses

A digital signal processor (DSP) based system is under development for analyzing and processing pulses produced by radiation detectors. The system is designed to replace conventional pulse-type, analog-to-digital converters. It is capable of capturing the complete radiation induced pulse in digital form. Subsequently, all the pulse features can be analyzed digitally (e.g., pulse validation, energy information, dynamic threshold determination, pulse duration, pulse shape analysis, and noise reduction). A prototype system has been built and performance parameters have been evaluated