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PIXIE-4 User’s Manual
V2.69
©
XIA
2015. All rights reserved.
liii
Count rates are then computed in the C library as follows:
Input count rate
ICR = FASTPEAKS / (LIVE TIME – FTDT)
Event rate
ER
= NUMEVENTS / RUN TIME
Channel output count rate
OCR = NOUT / LIVE TIME
Gate count rate
GCR = GCOUNT / LIVE TIME
The Pixie Viewer also computes a “DAQ fraction” in Igor, defined as LIVETIME / Igor run
time, which is an indication of the overall dead time lost to those processes not included in
SFDT, equivalent to the last row of Table 6.3. Users are free to use the reported values to
compute rates and time better matching their preferred definitions.
Fig. 6.13 OCR and Livetime fractions of FTDT and SFDT as a function of ICR in a Pixie-4
measurement with a random pulse generator. The measured OCR follows the expected behavior
from Eq. (4) with a fit value of Td very close to the pileup inspection time (energy filter rise time
plus energy filter flat top plus a few cycles).
Notes:
1)
Output pulse counters are updated whenever an event has been processed; input, gate
and all time counters are updated every ~7ms. Therefore reading rates at random times,
e.g. clicking
Update
in the Pixie-4 Viewer, might return slight inconsistencies between
input rates and output rates. At the end of the run, all rates are updated and these effects
should disappear.
2)
NOUT is counted for each event a channel is processed no matter if the channel had a
valid hit or not. Thus a channel that is processed in “read always” mode may have an
output count rate even though its input count rate is zero.
6.6.4 Dead time correction in the Pixie-4
Historically, dead time correction in analog systems relied on the system dead time
measurements taken directly from the acquisition system and the recorded output count rate.
For example, a peak sensing ADC module might output a “dead time” signal during the several