A Single Chip Computational Sensor System for Neutron Detection Applications

Author

Schemm, Nathan ; Balkir, Sina ; Hoffman, Michael W. ; Bauer, Mark ; Schultz, David ; Petrosky, James C. ; McClory, John W. ; Natta, Marcus ; Brand, Jennifer I. ; Tang, Jinke ; Wang, Wendong

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA

Volume

10

Issue

7

fYear

2010

fDate

7/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1226

Lastpage

1233

Abstract

This paper presents the design and test results of a standalone computational radiation sensor system based on a single chip solution. A low-power sensor front end with a charge sensitive amplifier and an event driven analog-to-digital converter is integrated on the same chip as a dedicated microcontroller to process and bin the data from the neutron detector diode heterojunction according to pulse height. This combination effectively implements a single chip multichannel analyzer with the capability to do further processing of the data in software. The design was fabricated in a 0.18 μm CMOS technology with field tests demonstrating the validity of the approaches taken. The total system power consumption is 24 μW.

Keywords

CMOS digital integrated circuits; analogue-digital conversion; high energy physics instrumentation computing; neutron detection; nuclear electronics; CMOS technology; analog-to-digital converter; charge sensitive amplifier; data processing; low-power sensor; microcontroller; neutron detection; neutron detector diode heterojunction; pulse height; single chip multichannel analyzer; single chip solution; standalone computational radiation sensor system; total system power consumption; Analog-digital conversion; CMOS technology; Detectors; Diodes; Event detection; Microcontrollers; Neutrons; Pulse amplifiers; Sensor systems; System testing; Computational sensor; gadolinium; hafnium oxide; multichannel analyzer; neutron detection; radiation detector;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Sensors Journal, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1530-437X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JSEN.2010.2040731

Filename

5471698