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Register a new userAn Efficient Test Facility For The Cherenkov Telescope Array FlashCam Readout Electronics Production
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The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the planned next-generation instrument for ground-based gamma-ray astronomy, currently under preparation by a world-wide consortium. The FlashCam group is preparing a photomultiplier-based camera for the Medium Size Telescopes of CTA, with a fully digital Readout System (ROS). For the forthcoming mass production of a substantial number of cameras, efficient test routines for all components are currently under development. We report here on a test facility for the ROS components. A test setup and routines have been developed and an early version of that setup has successfully been used to test a significant fraction of the ROS for the FlashCam camera prototype in January 2016. The test setup with its components and interface, as well as first results, are presented here.
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FlashCam is a Cherenkov camera development project centered around a fully digital trigger and readout scheme with smart, digital signal processing, and a horizontal architecture for the electromechanical implementation. The fully digital approach, based on commercial FADCs and FPGAs as key components, provides the option to easily implement different types of triggers as well as digitization and readout scenarios using identical hardware, by simply changing the firmware on the FPGAs. At the same time, a large dynamic range and high resolution of low-amplitude signals in a single readout channel per pixel is achieved using compression of high amplitude signals in the preamplifier and signal processing in the FPGA. The readout of the front-end modules into a camera server is Ethernet-based using standard Ethernet switches. In its current implementation, data transfer and backend processing rates of ~3.8 GBytes/sec have been achieved. Together with the dead-time-free front end event buffering on the FPGAs, this permits the cameras to operate at trigger rates of up to several tens of kHz. In the horizontal architecture of FlashCam, the photon detector plane (PDP), consisting of photon detectors, preamplifiers, high voltage-, control-, and monitoring systems, is a self-contained unit, which is interfaced through analogue signal transmission to the digital readout system. The horizontal integration of FlashCam is expected not only to be more cost efficient, it also allows PDPs with different types of photon detectors to be adapted to the FlashCam readout system. This paper describes the FlashCam concept, its verification process, and its implementation for a 12 m class CTA telescope with PMT-based PDP.
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a future gamma-ray observatory that is planned to significantly improve upon the sensitivity and precision of the current generation of Cherenkov telescopes. The observatory will consist of several dozens of telescopes with different sizes and equipped with different types of cameras. Of these, the FlashCam camera system is the first to implement a fully digital signal processing chain which allows for a traceable, configurable trigger scheme and flexible signal reconstruction. As of autumn 2016, a prototype FlashCam camera for the medium-sized telescopes of CTA nears completion. First results of the ongoing system tests demonstrate that the signal chain and the readout system surpass CTA requirements. The stability of the system is shown using long-term temperature cycling.
TARGET is an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designed to read out signals recorded by the photosensors in cameras of very-high-energy gamma-ray telescopes exploiting the imaging of Cherenkov radiation from atmospheric showers. TARGET capabilities include sampling at a high rate (typically 1 GSample/s), digitization, and triggering on the sum of four adjacent pixels. The small size, large number of channels read out per ASIC (16), low cost per channel, and deep buffer for trigger latency (~16 $mu$s at 1 GSample/s) make TARGET ideally suited for the readout in systems with a large number of telescopes instrumented with compact photosensors like multi-anode or silicon photomultipliers combined with dual-mirror optics. The possible advantages of such systems are better sensitivity, a larger field of view, and improved angular resolution. The two latest generations of TARGET ASICs, TARGET 5 and TARGET 7, are soon to be used for the first time in two prototypes of small-sized and medium-sized dual-mirror telescopes proposed in the framework of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) project. In this contribution we report on the performance of the TARGET ASICs and discuss future developments.
A Central Laser Facility is a system often used in astroparticle experiments based on arrays of fluorescence or Cherenkov light detectors. The instrument is based on a laser source positioned at a certain distance from the array, emitting fast light pulses in the vertical direction with the aim of calibrating the array and/or measuring the atmospheric transmission. In view of the future Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), a similar device could provide a calibration of the whole installation, both relative, i.e. each individual telescope with respect to the rest of the array, and absolute, with a precision better than 10%, if certain design requirements are met. Additionally, a precise monitoring of the sensitivity of each telescope can be made on time-scales of days to years. During calibration runs of the central laser facility, all detectors will be pointed towards the same portion of the laser beam at a given altitude. Simulations of the possible configurations of a Central Laser Facility for CTA (varying laser energy, pointing height and distance from the telescopes) have been performed
The New Iram Kid Arrays-2 (NIKA2) instrument has recently been installed at the IRAM 30 m telescope. NIKA2 is a state-of-art instrument dedicated to mm-wave astronomy using microwave kinetic inductance detectors (KID) as sensors. The three arrays installed in the camera, two at 1.25 mm and one at 2.05 mm, feature a total of 3300 KIDs. To instrument these large array of detectors, a specifically designed electronics, composed of 20 readout boards and hosted in three microTCA crates, has been developed. The implemented solution and the achieved performances are presented in this paper. We find that multiplexing factors of up to 400 detectors per board can be achieved with homogeneous performance across boards in real observing conditions, and a factor of more than 3 decrease in volume with respect to previous generations.
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