microDXP Technical Reference Manual
Version 3.15
October 7, 2019
36
3 MicroDXP Functional Description
3.1 Organizational Overview
The DXP channel architecture is shown in Figure 3-1. The four major operating blocks are
the Analog Signal Conditioner (ASC), digital Filter, Peak detector, and Pileup Inspector
(FiPPI), Digital Signal Processor (DSP), and PIC microcontroller. Also depicted are the
ADC, the two host interface connections, a digital temperature sensor and the nonvolatile
memory. The functions of each block are summarized below. This chapter does assume the
reader has some familiarity with x-ray pulse processing theory and electronic devices.
Please see Chapter 4 of this manual for a brief review.
Figure 3-1: Block diagram of the DXP channel architecture, showing the major functional
sections and interface port options.
3.2 The Analog Signal Conditioner (ASC)
The ASC has three major functions: to reduce the dynamic range of the input signal and
apply sufficient gain such that it can be adequately digitized by the 14-bit ADC, and to
reduce the bandwidth of the resultant signal to meet the Nyquist criterion based upon the
ADC sampling rate.
