Design of a high performance Digital data AcquIsition SYstem (DAISY) for innovative nuclear experiments

Villamarı́n, D.; Martínez, T.; Plaza, J.; Cano‐Ott, D.; González, Enrique; Alcayne, V.; Bécares, V.; Cembranos, Emilio Mendoza; Rada, A. Pérez de; Garcia, J. M. Vizan

doi:10.1016/j.nima.2023.168526

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 13 publications

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“…The execution time and latency results demonstrate the possibility of integrating the solution on real experimental platforms using tools that enable firmware adaptation of the acquisition devices. For comparison, the same rate per detector in the data acquisition system described in [29], with a configuration of 32 channels (6 cards with 4 channels), would require a sustained transfer rate between the cards and PCIe digitizers of 1.36 Gbytes/s. Such a figure is not achievable with PCIe 3.0 and would require a much faster data bus.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hardware Acceleration of Digital Pulse Shape Analysis Using FPGAs

González,

Ruiz,

Carpeño

et al. 2024

Sensors

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The BC501A sensor is a liquid scintillator frequently used in nuclear physics for detecting fast neutrons. This paper describes a hardware implementation of digital pulse shape analysis (DPSA) for real-time analysis. DPSA is an algorithm that extracts the physically relevant parameters from the detected BC501A signals. The hardware solution is implemented in a MicroTCA system that provides the physical, mechanical, electrical, and cooling support for an AMC board (NAMC-ZYNQ-FMC) with a Xilinx ZYNQ Ultrascale-MP SoC. The Xilinx FPGA programmable logic implements a JESD204B interface to high-speed ADCs. The physical and datalink JESD204B layers are implemented using hardware description language (HDL), while the Xilinx high-level synthesis language (HLS) is used for the transport and application layers. The DPSA algorithm is a JESD204B application layer that includes a FIR filter and a constant fraction discriminator (CFD) function, a baseline calculation function, a peak detection function, and an energy calculation function. This architecture achieves an analysis mean time of less than 100 µs per signal with an FPGA resource utilization of about 50% of its most used resources. This paper presents a high-performance DPSA embedded system that interfaces with a 1 GS/s ADC and performs accurate calculations with relatively low latency.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hardware Acceleration of Digital Pulse Shape Analysis Using FPGAs

González,

Ruiz,

Carpeño

et al. 2024

Sensors

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CLYC as a neutron detector in low background conditions

Plaza,

Bécares,

Cano-Ott

et al. 2023

Eur. Phys. J. C

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We report on the thermal neutron flux measurements carried out at the Laboratorio Subterráneo de Canfranc (LSC) with two commercial $$2^{\prime \prime } \times 2^{\prime \prime }$$ 2 ″ × 2 ″ CLYC detectors. The measurements were performed as part of an experimental campaign at LSC with $$^{3}$$ 3 He detectors, for establishing the sensitivity limits and use of CLYCs in low background conditions. A careful characterization of the intrinsic $$\alpha $$ α and $$\gamma $$ γ -ray background in the detectors was required and done with dedicated measurements. It was found that the $$\alpha $$ α activities in the two CLYC crystals differ by a factor of three, and the use of Monte Carlo simulations and a Bayesian unfolding method allowed us to determine the specific $$\alpha $$ α activities from the $$^{238}$$ 238 U and $$^{232}$$ 232 Th decay chains. The simulations and unfolding also revealed that the $$\gamma $$ γ -ray background registered in the detectors is dominated by the intrinsic activity of the components of the detector such as the aluminum housing and photo-multiplier and that the activity within the crystal is low in comparison. The data from the neutron flux measurements with the two detectors were analyzed with different methodologies: one based on an innovative $$\alpha $$ α /neutron pulse shape discrimination method and one based on the subtraction of the intrinsic $$\alpha $$ α background that masks the neutron signals in the region of interest. The neutron sensitivity of the CLYCs was calculated by Monte Carlo simulations with MCNP6 and GEANT4. The resulting thermal neutron fluxes are in good agreement with complementary flux measurement performed with $$^{3}$$ 3 He detectors, but close to the detection limit imposed by the intrinsic $$\alpha $$ α activity.

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Design of a high performance Digital data AcquIsition SYstem (DAISY) for innovative nuclear experiments

Cited by 2 publications

References 13 publications

Hardware Acceleration of Digital Pulse Shape Analysis Using FPGAs

Hardware Acceleration of Digital Pulse Shape Analysis Using FPGAs

CLYC as a neutron detector in low background conditions

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