PING for Nuclear Measurements: First Results

This paper deals with a new generation of acquisition systems for nuclear instrumentation. This project, called PING aims at developing instrumentation devices in order to cover a wide range of nuclear measurements with single hardware architecture. More specifically, this device is well suited for neutron measurements. This system is based on a full digital signal processing free from any analog signal neither formatting nor processing. Digitized signals can then be processed for physical information extraction. The dedicated embedded signal processing software in Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) allows us to achieve versatile passive or active neutron measurements, or gamma spectrometry. First experimental results are reported in this article. Both gamma and neutron measurements performance are presented.