Signal Processing for Radiation Detectors

4Energy Measurement

Pulse processing systems designed to measure the energy spectrum of radiation particles are known as energy spectroscopy or pulse‐height spectroscopy systems. The spectroscopy systems have played an important role in a number of scientific, industrial, and medical situations since the early 1950s, and their performance has continuously evolved ever since. In recent years, the improvement in the performance of radiation spectroscopy systems has been centered on using digital and monolithic pulse processing techniques though classic analog systems are still widely used in many situations. In this chapter, we discuss the principles of analog pulse‐height measurement systems, but many of the concepts introduced in this chapter are also used in the design and analysis of the digital and monolithic pulse processing systems. We start our discussion with an introduction to the general aspects of energy spectroscopy systems followed by a detailed description of the different components of the systems.

4.1 Generals

In Chapter 1 we saw that the total induced charge on a detector’s electrodes is proportional to the energy lost by radiation in the sensitive region of the detector. This means that the amplitude of a charge pulse represents the energy deposited in the detector, and therefore, a spectrum of the amplitude of the charge pulses essentially represents the distribution of energy deposition in the detector and is produced by using a chain of electronic circuits ...