A Hardware/Firmware-Based Switching Gate Multiplexing Method for Pulse Mode Radiation Detectors

Abstract: We present a hardware/firmware-based switching gate multiplexing method for pulse mode radiation detectors that can combine many detector signals into two readout channels. One readout channel passes the signal of the multiplexed detector that "fired" first, and the other channel provides a variable-width logic pulse, i.e., a pulse width modulation (PWM) signal, that identifies the active detector. The multiplexed output pulse is produced by passing the first active detector's signal to a fan-in circuit by gating on the corresponding channel for a fixed duration while blocking all other detector signals. It does this using individual analog switches for all the detector signals. Each switch is controlled by a fixed width logic pulse that is triggered by the arrival of the first active detector pulse. Both the fixed width logic pulse and the PWM signal are generated using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). To demonstrate the proposed multiplexing method, a prototype four-channel multiplexer was developed for use with four NaI(Tl) detectors. The performance of the multiplexer was evaluated in terms of its ability to retain energy resolution, timing resolution, and original pulse shape. The proposed multiplexing method showed very little degradation in energy resolution and timing resolution or alteration of pulse shape. The switching gate feature of the proposed method enables the multiplexer output to have very low noise contribution from the inactive channels. This multiplexing technique also has the unique capability of isolating and recovering the first active detector's output pulse in cases where there is overlap between pulses from different detectors in a single digitized record. These features make the proposed hardware/firmware-based switching gate multiplexing method very promising for application to large radiation detector networks.