Digital signal processing techniques for HPGe detectors operation

The fundamental signal processing techniques for HPGe detector operation, e.g. trapezoidal shaping, zero-area shaping with symmetric baseline subtraction, etc. are briefly reviewed, using both simulated signals and experimental detector waveforms. The relative advantages and disadvantages of the various weighting functions in case of different detector and preamplifier characteristics are derived and the fundamental detector waveform parameters are determined by means of general purpose signal processing techniques (e.g. auto-correlation function, Fourier transform, etc.). The DPLMS algorithm for optimum filter synthesis is finally used to derive appropriate weighting functions for energy estimation.