The design, development and performance of ASICs for space-borne CCD cameras
- Paper number
IAC-08.B4.6.B4
- Author
Dr. Nicholas Waltham, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, United Kingdom
- Year
2008
- Abstract
Today the CCD is the preeminent visible and ultra-violet wavelength image sensor in space-science, Earth and planetary remote sensing. However, not insignificant support electronics are required to read out a CCD sensor and to process and digitise its analogue video signal. In designing electronics for the space environment, there are strong requirements to minimize size, mass, and power dissipation, and yet to work from just a small catalogue of high-reliability space-qualified components. These requirements place severe constraints upon the CCD camera designer, particularly in the area of the analogue video signal processing and digitisation electronics. The problems are amplified with the ever increasing aspirations of the space science community with the call for larger focal plane arrays of multiple CCDs, reading out at increasingly higher pixel readout rates, and through multiple CCD output amplifiers. Collectively, these requirements demand a continuous and strategic programme in the development of space-qualified CCD readout electronics. Our approach at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory has been to design, develop and space-qualify a series of mixed-signal ASICs. This paper presents details of our current designs and their performance as measured in the laboratory. It concludes by describing the use of these ASICs within CCD cameras designed for instruments on-board NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-08.B4.6.B4.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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