A very low-cost portable multichannel analyzer

Abstract

A very low-cost portable Multichannel Analyzer (MCA) built with off-the-shelf commercial components is presented. Built around an universal microcontroller based platform for portable instruments, previously developed in our group, this intelligent portable MCA is operated by multicell Li-ion batteries and has power, and memory autonomy, for several hours of spectra collecting. The MCA integrates a basic frontend pulse shape amplifier, a base line restorer, a peak detector and logic control circuitry. The growing of the radiation spectrum can be easily observed on site through a dot-matrix graphic display. To save the acquired data and allow for the configuration of setup parameters, it connects to any host computer through standard USB, IrDA or RS-232 serial interfaces being also prepared to interface a GPS unit. Software application programs in both the portable MCA and the host PC are presented.

Development of multichannel analyzer using sound card ADC for nuclear spectroscopy system

“…MCA system consists of data acquisition, processing and storage unit, ADC and Graphical user interface module (GUI) [1] [3]. MCA scans the whole energy range of radionuclide and records the number of pulses counts for each energy and store it in the specific address for determining the nuclide in nuclear spectroscopy system.…”

A personal digital assistant-based portable radiation spectrometer

“…Compared with other portable radiation spectrometer on market [1,2] that most are based on microcontroller platform for data acquisition and spectral analysis, the PDA SPECTROMETER can store more spectra and provide nuclide identification in field applications for nuclear industry, medicine, astronomy, archaeology, and environmental survey. The PDA-based system has the unique feature of low-power consumption, small size, color graphical display and handy communication interfaces.…”