Low power embedded processing of scintillation events with silicon photo multipliers

Abstract

The advancement and use of silicon photo multiplier (SiPM) technology has enabled portable devices for applications such as scintillation detection to be developed. The proposed analogue to digital converter (ADC) architecture and field programmable gate array (FPGA) system configuration advances on analogue signal processing methods, traditionally employed for gamma isotope identification applications. This is achieved by high speed sampling of SiPM output signals and real-time FPGA processing, whilst consuming low power, thus extending device operation times. Results demonstrate 7-bit peak capture accuracy of an 8 μs scintillation event, using a 25 MHz ADC sample rate.