A specific multi-channel photon-counting unit for air-pollution measurement

Author

Papageorgas, P. ; Maroulis, D. ; Karkanis, S.I. ; Theofanous, N.I. ; Winter, H. ; Albrecht, H.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Inf., Athens Univ., Greece

Volume

3

fYear

1999

fDate

1999

Firstpage

1183

Abstract

A photon-counting system based on an appropriate microcontroller has been developed. This system controls, acquires, processes and stores the data from a high-resolution multi-channel gas analyzer and provides accurate photon-counting measurements using suitable Photomultiplier Tubes (PMTs) as detectors of the Raman scattering signals. The implemented system ensures low power consumption (90 W for the overall system), low cost, increased reliability and high sensitivity. Also the entire unit allows auto-calibration and drift compensation. Finally, the present photon-counting system can be used in a broad field of applications, in medical electronics (e.g. confocal microscopy), air pollution optical measurements, laser sounding of the atmosphere, and electrooptical systems, provided that PMTs are used in the pulse-counting mode

Keywords

Raman spectroscopy; air pollution measurement; counting circuits; gas sensors; photomultipliers; photon counting; physical instrumentation control; 90 W; PMT; Raman scattering signals; air pollution optical measurement; air-pollution measurement; auto-calibration; confocal microscopy; discriminator; drift compensation; high-resolution multi-channel gas analyzer; laser sounding; medical electronics; microcontroller; multi-channel photon-counting; photomultiplier tubes; photon-counting measurements; portable instrument; power consumption; preamplifier; pulse-counting mode; reliability; Atmospheric measurements; Control systems; Microcontrollers; Optical control; Optical microscopy; Pollution measurement; Power system reliability; Process control; Pulse measurements; Signal analysis;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electronics, Circuits and Systems, 1999. Proceedings of ICECS '99. The 6th IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Pafos

Print_ISBN

0-7803-5682-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICECS.1999.814381

Filename

814381