Design Of Portable Gamma-ray Spectrum Acquisition System Based On ARM-linux

A mass of unforeseen gamma ray will be found in the field soil and rock when human surveypetroleum or precious mineral. The field gamma ray spectrometry survey is one of the nucleargeophysical methods. After the accident of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, our citizens arebeginning to pay more attention to radiation monitoring of the living quarters and the internaldecoration in the buildings.At present, single chip is often used as the core controller for the gamma ray spectrometer. Alarge number of data SRAMs, program EROMs and address decoding latched components are alsoused. The single chip is connected to the PC by the RS-232serial port. Assembly language is used forthe firmware program while writing some application programs with direct drives. As a portablespectrometer, it requires more for portability, integration and low power consumption. Embeddedtechnology exactly satisfies these requirements. It is easy to cut the software and hardware. It has anincomparable advantage than any architecture before.GPS has been put into wide use by many countries as a satellite positioning system. It has beenblended in nearly all the production activities, such as surveying and mapping, outdoor data collecting,vehicle navigation and travel. GPS is also quite significant for nuclear detecting. It can be used for thelocation of time and space. It is convenient for the subsequent analysis of the nuclear data.In this paper, by utilizing the latest embedded technology, we built an ARM-Linux embeddeddevelopment platform and a portable γ ray spectrometer which can undertake multitasking and haspowerful real-time performance, low power consumption. Firstly, a multi-channel pulse amplitudeanalyzer was designed, and then both the A/D transition driver module and multi-channel pulseamplitude analyzer interface drivers were developed. Finally using QT/E lib, a software that cananalyze and process spectrum data was also developed. Basing on the above development, the captureof time and localization of space were also integrated in the spectrometer with GPS module. Itexpanded the function of the spectrometer and made up for the defect of the traditional nucleardetection device. Combining the collected data with the location of the test site, it realized radiationmonitoring to acquire the pollution distribution. Meanwhile, it can be used for the wild oreexploration.