pulse counter

Mar 23, 2010 21 Replies

On Mar 28, 6:45=A0pm, George Herold wrote: =A0

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If it matters, you can use an AC-coupled monostable to capture the fast rise and generate a 'well-behaved' timing pulse, independent of the slow fall times. For critical work (proportional counters) a delay-line amplifier can do even better. The input pulse and its attenuated/delayed/inverted copy are summed, and if the sum is done carefully, the exponential downward tail of the input exactly cancels against the upward tail of its delay, so all your pulses look like little lumps on a dead-flat background.

Four meters of cat-5 cable with a lower-than-110 ohm terminator generates a negative reflected pulse about 100 ns late (there's four pairs in the cable, and the return pulse goes four lengths, reflects, and comes back four more lengths).

And

Ok the AC coupling idea is an interesting question. (Jon Kirwan suggested that too...private email.) I wanted to DC couple everything, as I figured the AC level would move around with the count rate and I'd like to 'know' where the trigger level is. But I wonder if AC coupling would be better (at not missing closely spaced double pulses) at lower count rates?

I never heard of the cat 5 cable idea before.. sounds fun. I remember doing similar tricks with a roll of coax cable...had about a 1us delay and you could change the phase by opening or shorting the end.

George H.

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