A model for designing an electrical network to increase the speedof pyroelectric sensors

Pyroelectric sensors are widely used in joulmeters to measure the laser energy in a broad wavelength range. The measurements are usually made with sensors calibrated by the peak height of the output voltage pulse. They have few requirements for external devices, are mechanically robust and quite accurate. However, the use of this type of sensor with laser sources at a high pulse-repetition frequency is limited because of their long response time, of the order of 100 ms. An internal model of the pyroelectric transducer is estimated by the auto-regressive-moving-average technique by processing the impulse response. This technique has already been applied successfully for other types of sensors and is used here for modelling the actual transfer function of the sensor. This work presents the identification of a model that describes the pulse response of the pyroelectric sensor, also incorporating the load effects of the electronics attached to the sensor. Once the model is identified, it can be used for the design of an optimal compensation network that reduces the response time of the sensor. The results of simulations and experiments using GENTEC sensors (series ED-200 and 500) are presented.