The Prospects for Using High-Speed Analog-to-Digital Converters to Analyze the Signals of Ionizing-Radiation Detectors

The potential advantages of recording digital signals from ionizing-radiation detectors are considered. State-of-the-art high-speed analog-to-digital converters operating at sampling frequencies of 400 MHz (2.5 ns) and higher with a buffer storage of up to 4 Gbyte and a data-input rate of up to 400 Mbyte/s are capable of recording continuous pulse sequences with a throughput of >10⁷ pulse/s in less than 10 s. In contrast to standard recording methods in which overlapping pulses are truncated, the recording of complete signal flows allows one to detect and resolve overlapping pulses quite well, provided they arrive within 20–40 ns of one another.