Triangle bipolar pulse shaping and pileup correction based on DSP

Programmable Digital Signal Processing (DSP) microprocessors are capable of doing complex discrete signal processing algorithms with clock rates above 50 MHz. This combined with their low expense, ease of use and selected dedicated hardware make them an ideal option for spectrometer data acquisition systems. For this generation of spectrometers, functions that are typically performed in dedicated circuits, or offline, are being migrated to the field programmable gate array (FPGA). This will not only reduce the electronics, but the features of modern FPGAs can be utilized to add considerable signal processing power to produce higher resolution spectra. In this paper we report on an all-digital triangle bipolar pulse shaping and pileup correction algorithm that is being developed for the DSP. The pileup mitigation algorithm will allow the spectrometers to run at higher count rates or with multiple sources without imposing large data losses due to the overlapping of scintillation signals. This correction technique utilizes a very narrow bipolar triangle digital pulse shaping algorithm to extract energy information for most pileup events.