Development of an open-source nuclear event discrimination pipeline using FPGA-based systems: Comprehensive approach with data acquisition, noise filtering, trapezoidal shaping, and benchmarking with ionization and Scintillation detection technology

This study addresses the need for high-speed detection and processing systems in nuclear radiation analysis and particle detection, particularly for critical experiments like DUNE. A digital signal processing pipeline was developed, based on acquiring signals from Geiger and Scintillation detectors for Thorium 232 (232Th), Americium 241 (241Am) and Cobalt 60 (60Co) samples. This pipeline incorporates the design and implementation of a FIR filter and a trapezoidal shaper to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio and enable energy estimation through a pulse height discriminator. Validation of the pipeline on an AMD Xilinx ZYNQ 7000 SoC achieved an 89 % signal modeling accuracy and reduced the pile-up effect in events. The Multichannel Spectrum Analyzer successfully discriminated events across different energy channels in both simulation and real event acquisition, yielding energy spectra for radioactive isotopes. Emphasizing the importance of open-source tool development, this work is accessible in a public repository. As future work, a design for a reconfigurable and accessible platform from the processing system is proposed, alongside validating the pipeline with other isotopes, detectors, and higher-speed and resolution ADCs is also proposed.