Application of the digital pulse processing technique to proportional counters

Digital signal processing techniques are applied to signals from proportional counters (PC) to manipulate and improve pulse-height distributions. Pulse-height and risetime distributions are simultaneously analysed and the parameters for optimum pulse risetime discrimination are determined. X-ray interactions occurring in and near detector walls and in the electron multiplication region are eliminated. As a practical example the technique is applied to X-ray fluorescence analysis. Preliminary results show that backgrounds due to wall effects can be effectively reduced