Topical seminar on methods and techniques of neutron experiments

04-28-2026 11:00 DSC Conference Hall 119 build, 3 floor, 326 room and remotely

"Results of the Development and Testing of the MPD-32 Data Acquisition System"

V.V. Shvetsov

This work presents the results of the development and testing of a data acquisition system based on MPD-32 modules, created for the wide-aperture backscattering detector (BSD) of the High-Resolution Fourier Diffractometer (HRFD) at the IBR-2 pulsed reactor. The MPD-32 modules are designed in the NIM standard and include 32-channel analog discriminator boards and digital signal processing boards based on Altera Cyclone IV FPGAs, which provide neutron time-of-flight registration and data transfer via a USB 3.0 interface.

During testing with a signal simulator developed at the IBR-2 Spectrometer Complex, data losses were identified due to software latencies and operating system service activity on the control computer. Consequently, the initially designed system architecture was modified: a data concentrator was introduced, implemented on an ASUS PN53 mini-PC running the Linux/Ubuntu operating system, with increased RAM capacity and an additional disk for data recording during measurements. The data acquisition system is connected to the control computer via a Gigabit Ethernet network.

The results of comparative measurements using the backscattering detector with the MPD-240 system on standard samples of V, Al₂O₃, and Fe powder are presented.

"Data Acquisition Software Based on MPD-32 Modules and Linux/Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi OS Linux/Debian Mini Computers"

V.A. Drozdov

As part of the project to develop the BSD detector for the HRFD Fourier diffractometer, data acquisition (DAQ) software has been developed. The DAQ system consists of MPD  32 TOF encoder modules with ASUS miniPC PN53 or Raspberry Pi 5 mini-computers running under Linux/Ubuntu or Raspberry OS Linux/Debian, as well as a software suite that implements a data acquisition server on these computers and provides connectivity for the MPD 32 modules via USB 3 interface. The report presents a description of the server architecture, the software for module operation, and the client server communication organization over Ethernet TCP/IP. User graphical and web interfaces for interacting with the data acquisition system are also presented. The report will demonstrate the results of operating the system on the HRFD spectrometer with the BSD detector.