Frequency spectrum analysis for spectrum stabilization in airborne gamma-ray spectrometer

Abstract

Abnormal multi-crystal spectral drifts often can be observed when power on the airborne gamma-ray spectrometer. Currently, these spectral drifts of each crystal are generally eliminated through manual adjustment, which is time-consuming and labor-ineffective. To realize this quick automatic spectrum stabilization of multi-crystal, a frequency spectrum analysis method for natural gamma-ray background spectrum is put forward in this paper to replace traditional spectrum stabilization method used characteristic peak. Based on the polynomial fitting of high harmonics in frequency spectrum and gamma-ray spectral drift, it calculates overall spectral drift of natural gamma-ray spectrum and adjusts the gain of spectrometer by this spectral drift value, thus completing quick spectrum stabilization in the power on stage of spectrometer. This method requires no manual intervention and can obtain the overall spectral drift value automatically under no time-domain pre-processing to the natural gamma-ray spectra. The spectral drift value calculated by this method has an absolute error less than five channels (1024 resolution) and a relative error smaller than 0.80%, which can satisfy the quick automatic spectrum stabilization requirement when power on the airborne gamma-ray spectrometer instead of manual operation.

Keywords: Airborne gamma-ray spectrometer; Frequency spectrum analysis; Multi-crystal spectrum stabilization; Natural gamma-ray background spectrum.