Data Acquisition System for Underwater In Situ Gamma Radiation Spectrometer

Radiation measurement at underwater environment helps to get a better understanding on sedimentation, geological structure, radiation monitoring, and so on. However, reports about radiation of natural underwater environment are rare, especially in situ gamma radiation measurement. Two gamma spectrometers are going to be used in underwater in situ radiation measurement. Aiming at different scientific goals, the spectrometers can develop multiple kinds of measurements, including dose and energy spectrum of gamma rays. In this article, a compatible data acquisition (DAQ) system is proposed. The DAQ provides features of readout, visualization, data process algorithm, and file input and output. To benefit from high reusability and low coupling, the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern is adopted in the DAQ system. With an application layer protocol based on Modbus, the DAQ can be fully compatible with different spectrometers. Besides supporting of real-time control, the DAQ system also provides a way to program the spectrometers to execute an unmanned mission, so that the spectrometers can load a timetable from a built-in flash memory and run automatically.