A personal digital assistant-based portable radiation spectrometer

A nuclear spectrometer based on a personal digital assistant (PDA) has been designed, built and tested. This portable radiation spectrometer, PDA SPECTROMETER, can be used for data acquisition and spectrum analysis in a field that requiring output of radiation dose rate and count rate as well as nuclide identification. A Complex Programmable Logic Design (CPLD) circuit block is built for data communication with PDA through RS-232 serial interfaces, backed up by a global positioning system (GPS) unit. The architecture and the data acquisition block are optimized to accommodate high data throughput.