Portable pulse height analyzing system

Low power, battery operated, compact Portable Pulse Height Analyzing System/Multi Channel Analyzer (PMCA) has been designed and developed for monitoring the various low activity radioisotopes in situ. PMCA can also be used in mobile radiation monitoring vans, wherein, gamma spectrum data collected at different locations can be stored in the battery backed RAM disk and down-loaded on to the PC via a serial link. Designed primarily for measurement and analysis of isotope activity and for field experiments, it can be used with most of the radiation detectors used for pulse height spectrum analysis. PMCA is built around embedded PC hardware architecture wherein all the cards are made with state of the art technology with extensive use of SMT and ASICS. PMCA provides features comparable with standard laboratory models and enables computation of integral area, background area, net peak area, FWHM, peak centroid and energy calibration in the field. This paper describes Portable Pulse Height Analyzing System with focus on following features: a) Hardware implementation of well-known multi channel analyzer technique using embedded PC hardware architecture. b) Software implementation of spectrum acquisition and analysis using high level language namely, C. (author)