Simplified digital acquisition of microdischarge pulses

A new concept of the measurement of the height of microdischarge pulses is proposed and implemented on a special hardware assembly. The concept utilizes the highly asymmetric shape of microdischarge pulses, i.e. the sharp rise edge and slowly decaying tail that forms an almost 'horizontal' plateau. The maximum height of a pulse can be determined by imposing a certain time delay in saving sample points. The time delay must be equal to or longer than the time necessary for the full rise of the front edge of the pulse. The new concept completely removes time-consuming procedures seeking for signal local maxima used in current digitizers with logic circuits. This makes the system very fast and brings it to the very limit of the underlying natural process itself which represents the main advantage compared with other existing methods. A certain disadvantage of the new concept is in its restriction to asymmetric pulses only, but, however, this class of pulses comprises the broad spectrum of pulsating phenomena appearing in various branches of science and technology. This gives the proposed concept good applicability not only in the field of electric microdischarges but also in many other experimental domains.