Research On Framework And Applications Of Reconfigurable Nuclear Instruments

Scientific instruments are essential tools for human to understand and explore the world. Development of the scientific instrument has gone through analog instruments, digital instruments, intelligent instruments and now virtual instruments. As a branch of scientific instruments, development of nuclear instruments has also experienced the same stages. Reconfigurable nuclear instruments are the latest development direction of nuclear instruments, which could be reconstructed using dedicated measurement IP cores for different applications. Reconfigurable nuclear instruments realize special nuclear instruments in a unified hardware template. It has a very broad range of application prospects in the field of nuclear and particle basic research and nuclear technology research. International organizations attach great importance to study reconfigurable nuclear instruments. In the near future, nuclear instruments based on reconfigurable technology would be able to replace the traditional nuclear instruments in a variety of nuclear measurement applications.This work analyzes the basic structure of nuclear electronics equipment, presents the concept of reconfiguration of nuclear electronics instrument, proposes a complete framework of reconfigurable nuclear instrument based on reconfigurable devices and digital pulse processing and finally realizes a reconfigurable instrument on an FPGA chip. The Cyclone III family FPGA chip is selected as target reconfigurable device to implement the reconfigurable nuclear instrument. Multiple dedicated reconfigurable IP cores are designed based on nuclear instrument functions and DPP algorithm. With the front-end analog plug-in and the communication control chip containing MCU, nuclear instruments in a reconfigurable hardware template is implemented.This paper introduces the concepts of reconfigurable nuclear electronics equipment in detail and puts forward the concrete performance indicators. A detailed description of reconfiguration framework and hierarchy in nuclear instruments is stated. And next, the design of integrated hardware, the design of front-end analog plug-in, the nuclear detection IP cores design and the design of supported software drivers are detailed described. Finally, the reconfigurable nuclear instrument is used in three different types of applications. The first one is typical teaching experiments in nuclear and particle specialty in university. The second one is the frequency locking system in Direct Doppler wind LIDAR. The last one is high-precision time pulse generator based on time measuring IP core. The different applications prove that reconfigurable nuclear instrument qualifies for various measuring tasks through reconfiguration.The innovation of this thesis are:(1) Based on DPP technology, reconfigurable technology is brought into nuclear detection system. We put forward the conceptual framework and the method of reconfiguration of a reconfigurable nuclear instrument, Constituted by the analog front-end plug-ins, measuring IP cores and supported software drivers. To meet the different needs of the nuclear detection system, the hardware is configured to realize different dedicated nuclear instrument. Based on this framework, a reconfigurable nuclear instrument is designed;(2) In the reconfigurable framework, a set of measuring IP core libraries are designed, including the basic functions of libraries, dedicated nuclear measuring cores and system communication cores. And companion drivers, front-end analog plug-ins are also designed to complete the measurement, communications and reconfiguration functions. The IP cores cover the vast majority of nuclear measuring content. Reconfigured instruments by restructuring IP cores could substitute commercial instruments;(3) The reconfigurable instrument is used in multiple measuring applications: teaching experiments in nuclear and Particle specialty, Direct Doppler wind LIDAR. Reconfigurable Nuclear Instrument successfully completes measuring tasks by reconstructed measuring IP cores and front-end analog circuits.Practice has proved that the framework could reach the level of commercial equipment. Therefore, the reconfigurable nuclear instrument could replace the traditional instruments in nuclear measurement.