Preliminary Design of a FADC Readout System for the Alpha/Beta Discrimination in a Large Area Plastic Scintillation Detector

TL;DR

This paper presents a high-speed FADC readout system using ZYNQ SoC for alpha/beta discrimination in a large-area plastic scintillation detector, achieving high resolution and effective discrimination with simple algorithms.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel FADC readout system with dual channels, high sampling rate, and simple discrimination algorithms tailored for alpha/beta detection in scintillation detectors.

Findings

Achieved 1 GSPS sampling rate with 14-bit resolution.

Demonstrated effective alpha/beta discrimination using least-square classification.

System offers high data throughput, low latency, and flexibility.

Abstract

This paper describes a FADC Readout system developed for the tap water $\alpha/\beta$ dose monitoring system which is based on EJ444 phoswich scintillation detector and wavelength shifting fiber readout. The Readout system contains dual sampling channels that can supply sampling rate up to 1 GSPS, 14-Bit vertical resolution and adequate effective number of bits (9.7 Bits at 10 MHz), which is optimum for the discrimination of the minimal difference between alpha/beta signals. Moreover, the system is based on a ZYNQ SoC which provides high data throughput speed, low latency and excellent flexibility. As for the discrimination algorithms, a simple least-square classification method is used to discriminate the $\alpha/\beta$ signals and shows high discrimination capability. Besides, the front-end electronics and high voltage supply modules are also briefly introduced in the paper.