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Dosemeter development with the Dosepix pixel detector

20.12.2019

The Dosepix is a hybrid pixel detector that is specifically designed to meet the needs of mobile radiation dosimetry measurements. The tightly coupled combination of sensor material and specific integrated circuit electronics (ASIC) also makes this detector an example of a so-called smart sensor.

To process the large amount of data from several of these detectors, an electronic evaluation unit was developed, and the corresponding firmware was engineered on the basis of an energy-saving Gecko microcontroller in collaboration with the Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences.

The novel Dosepix is a 16 x 16 hybrid pixel detector with a 12.25 mm² small sensor area that was developed at CERN. The modern chip combines the active silicon detector area with an intelligent ASIC which reduces the enormous amount of measurement data multiple times.

The basis of the evaluation electronics is an energy-saving Giant Gecko GG11 ARM Cortex-M4 32-bit microcontroller. The development process included a PCB design for the readout of up to four differently filtered Dosepix pixel detectors. The read-out measurement data in the form of 16-bin spectra are evaluated by all detectors directly in the implemented software and calculated to a dose value.

Several user and communication interfaces (display, remote web browser, alarm, etc.) were realized to respond to the needs of modern communication technology and remote monitoring.

Figure: A single Dosepix hybrid pixel detector (left), Dosepix including evaluation electronics and communication interfaces (right).

Contact

Opens window for sending emailJ. Roth, Department 6.3, Working Group 6.35

Opens window for sending emailM. Lebbing, Department 6.3, Working Group 6.35

Opens window for sending emailJ. Koll, Section Z175