A Typical Particle Detection system that could be made with HERON products

We do not supply pre-configured particle detection systems - but many of our customers use HERON and HEART products for this application. 

There are many different particle detection techniques that can be used - we have seen systems use special sensors, Imaging techniques and even Sonar and Radar techniques.  

In most Particle detection systems high resolution data is needed, but only for the part of the signal that is interesting, i.e. has a particle present. This often leads to the use of transient analysis techniques where data is sampled at high rates, and the detection of some "event" triggers the storage of a small burst of data for processing.

Although not all of the data is being processed, the fact that many detections can occur close together means that the system must still guarantee the processing time (i.e. be a real time system) otherwise storage buffers will overflow. This is where a HERON system becomes interesting.  

Whatever the sensor used, the front end must gather the high speed data and perform some simple "event" detection. This is a perfect use for an FPGA, perhaps one that provides the correct I/O for the sensor too. The FPGA can be used as a limited buffer for the data captured and can probably be programmed to add some type of timestamp or other identification code to the data. The stored data can be output over the HERON FIFOs to a processing engine made of DSPs and/or FPGAs .

Some systems will require a signal of known shape to be output and the received signal to be compared with that shape. This is why we see the HERON-IO2 and HERON-IO5 as popular choices as they offer both DACs and ADCs.

The modules will be placed onto a HERON module carrier - like the HEPC9 PCI, HECPCI9 cPCI or HERON-BASE2 USB cards.

You may also require additional interfaces to control other hardware.
You will also need software tools to develop the programs for your FPGAs and or DSPs

So a typical system would be :-
HEPC9 / HERON-BASE2, HERON-IO5, HERON-FPGA3. But your needs might be different - tell us what they are.

FFTs and High Speed Filters are commonly used techniques, use these links for papers on implementing them using FPGA and/or DSP.