Adaptive digital trigger architecture in FPGA

A fully digital trigger architecture for high-resolution spectroscopy is introduced. The proposed architecture is constituted by an ensemble of modules whose proper combination and initialization addresses at best sometimes conflicting requirements, as signal discrimination, multiple hit detection, finite charge-collection time, drifting baseline level, and timing precision. This can be achieved in extremely wide operative conditions, i.e. signal amplitude, event rate, noise features, disturbances. The architecture has been implemented and experimentally validated into a field programmable gate array (FPGA) device.