Graphical Environmental Tools for Application to Gamma-Ray Energy Tracking Arrays

Highly segmented, position-sensitive, germanium detector systems are being developed for nuclear physics research where traditional electronic processing with mixed analog and digital function blocks would be enormously complex and costly. Future systems will be constructed using pipelined processing of high-speed digitized signals, as in the telecommunications industry. This project will use digital signal processing concepts and existing graphical system design tools to develop a set of reusable modular functions and tools targeted for the nuclear physics community. Researchers working with complex nuclear detector arrays such as the Gamma Ray Energy Tracking Array (GRETA) will be able to construct data processing concepts through simple graphical interfaces. Software tools were evaluated and acquired in Phase I, and an evaluation platform was constructed to exhibit the real-world performance of algorithms developed for implementation within a field programmable gate array (FPGA). Data processing rates of 100 MHz were successfully demonstrated. Phase II will use the graphical FPGA design tools to develop high speed, real-time algorithms targeted for implementation on multiple channel hardware platforms. A modular library approach will be used to develop and provide a set of nuclear signal processing functions that can be used by the nuclear physics community to generate their own customizable functions.