Development of Embedded DAQ System for radiation monitoring using counting and integration methods

This study has developed an embedded Data Acquisition (DAQ) system for the radiation monitoring using two different methods which are counting and integration. The counting method is useful to measure the detectors signal accurately when radiation enters the detector. But it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish individual signals when the signal pulse is increased. On the other hand, the integration method is better at measuring the high flux signals, but it could be difficult to measure the low flux due to the electronics noise. Thus an embedded system was developed by using both methods based on the ATmega128 microcontroller and the charge integration chip. This system can be operated in both low and high radiation flux environments. The data is recorded into a personal computer with a linux operating system in real time through the serial connection. The data was analyzed with the C++based data analysis program, ROOT package. This embedded DAQ system was tested with test pulse. The developed system is portable and useful for flux monitoring in various radiation environments.