Development of a Wi-Fi Enabled Low-Cost Radiation Detection Device

Radiation detection devices are important in many applications, ranging from medical diagnosis equipments, environmental health and safety, to monitoring of nuclear power plants. We have designed and built a semiconductor diode-based low-cost radiation detection apparatus suitable for measuring high energy gamma radiation. Our system uses a semiconductor p-i-n photodiode as the detector and low-cost electronic circuit to process the nuclear pulses generated by the detector. The analog pulse detection circuit comprises of JFET input operational amplifiers and high-speed comparators. The analog circuit is then interfaced with a microcontroller for pulse counting and dose measurement. Our fabricated radiation detection system also has built-in wi-fi capability to connect to a secured wireless network which makes it an ideal candidate for remote radiation monitoring. In this project, first we designed and simulated the electronic circuit using LTspice software. Then, we designed a printed circuit board (PCB) using EAGLE and fabricated it using a PCB milling machine. Following, we soldered the electronic components and built the complete prototype circuit on the PCB. The microcontroller is programmed using Arduino IDE which continuously monitors the radiation level and can activate an alarm when the radiation level surpasses beyond a programmed safety threshold. Finally, we have designed and modeled an EMI shielded enclosure with electrical feedthroughs using Solidworks. A sealed aluminum box was machined to attach the electrical BNC connectors and house all components inside the box. The detector, electronics, and a radiation source were then assembled inside the enclosure box to complete the system and perform experiments in the laboratory. The prototype device performance was tested under an Americium-241 source. We will present the details of our device design, simulation, fabrication and experimental results