Digital logarithmic airborne gamma ray spectrometer

A new digital logarithmic airborne gamma ray spectrometer is designed in this study. The spectrometer adopts a high-speed and high-accuracy logarithmic amplifier （LOGll4） to amplify the pulse signal logarithmically and to improve the utilization of the ADC dynamic range because the low-energy pulse signal has a larger gain than the high-energy pulse signal. After energy calibration, the spectrometer can clearly distinguish photopeaks at 239, 352, 583 and 609 keV in the low-energy spectral sections. The photopeak energy resolution of 137Cs improves to 6.75% from the original 7.8%. Furthermore, the energy resolution of three photopeaks, namely, K, U, and Th, is maintained, and the overall stability of the energy spectrum is increased through potassium peak spectrum stabilization. Thus, it is possible to effectively measure energy from 20 keV to 10 MeV.

A high dynamic range linear RF power detector with a preceding LNA

A design of high dynamic range linear radio frequency power detector （PD）, aimed for transmitter carrier leakage suppression is presented in this paper. Based on the logarithmic amplifier principle, this detector utilizes the successive detection method to achieve a high dynamic range in the radio frequency band. In order to increase sensitivity, a low noise amplifier （LNA） is placed in the front of this detector. DC coupling is adopted in this architecture to reduce parasitics and save area, but this will unavoidably cause DC offsets in the circuit which are detrimental to the dynamic range. So a DC offset cancelling （DCOC） technique is proposed to solve the problem. Finally, this detector was fabricated in the SMIC 0.13μm CMOS process. The measured results show that it achieves a wide dynamic range of 50 dB/40 dB with log errors in 4-1 dB at 900 MHz/2 GHz, while draws 16 mA from a 1.5 V power supply. The active chip area is 0.27×0.67 mm2.