A New Method of Time Interval Measurement With High Resolution Over Wide Dynamic Range for Nuclear Timing Spectroscopy Applications

The paper describes a new method for time interval measurement for high resolution nuclear timing spectroscopy system. Unlike the conventional method described in this paper, the method makes use of high resolution (16 bit ADC) with low conversion time of nearly 1 μs along with a linear ramp which is generated at the instant of START pulse. The ramp output is sampled at the instant of STOP pulse and digitized with this ADC to measure the time interval with resolution of 16 bit. The system has been constructed using micro-controller based PC interface circuit and results have been reported in this paper. The system offers high resolution of 390 ps with wide range of 25.6 μs.