Hardware requirements for digital nuclear radiation spectroscopy

Nuclear radiation spectroscopy is nowadays often relying on digital acquisition techniques. The present paper addresses the problem of analyzing systematically the requirements of the digitizer in terms of sampling frequency and number of bits to minimize the energy resolution degradation caused by the digitizing process. The analysis is performed using simulated pulses of typical nuclear spectroscopy detectors and the pulse area as energy estimate. Additional relevant issues, such as the hardware architecture and data throughput speed, will be also taken into account.