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Radiation tolerance studies on the VA32 ASIC for DAMPE BGO calorimeter
Abstract
The Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is being constructed as a scientific satellite to observe high energy cosmic rays in space. As a crucial detector of DAMPE, the EGO calorimeter consists of 1848 PMT dynode signals which bring difficulties in front-end electronics on the space-limited and power-limited satellite platform. To overcome the challenge, a low-noise, low-power and high-integration ASIC chip, named VA32IADR14.2, is taken into account. In order to evaluate the radiation tolerance of the chip in space radiation environment, both single event effect (SEE) and total ionizing dose (TID) tests were performed. The SEE test result shows that the effective linear energy transfer (LET) threshold of single event latch-up (SEL) of the chip is around 23.0 MeV-cm(2)/mg, which is relatively sensitive, thus protection methods must be taken in the electronics design. The TID test result shows that the TID performance of the chip is higher than 25 Krad(Si), which satisfies the design specification.
... A series of radiation tests, including total dose (TID) tests and single event effect (SEE) tests, were conducted both for the ASICs and for the FPGA chips [7,8]. Based on the test results, several effective protection or mitigation methods were taken for the FEE design, such as current monitoring and latch-up protection circuit for the ASICs, TMR (triple module redundancy) for the logic design, etc. Beside the current monitoring function, other information of the FEE, such as temperature and the values of the status registers are acquired by the FPGA logic and sent to PDPU as well. ...
... Changqing FENG et al an ASIC component is higher than 37.5 MeV-cm 2 /mg, the calculated SEE rate will be lower than 1.010 -8 /device/day. In order to evaluate the reliability in the space radiation environment, a series of single event effect (SEE) tests were conducted, both for the ASICs and for the FPGA chips [8,9]. Test results showed that both VA160 and VATA160 ASICs are sensitive to single event latch-up (SEL), thus effective SEL protection circuit was designed for the front-end electronics board. ...
... VATA160 is a low-noise, low-power commercial application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chip designed by IDEAS (Norway). It is a core device in the electronics system of the sub-detectors on the scientific satellite Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) [1][2][3]. The DAMPE satellite was launched at the end of 2015 for a mission period of at least 3 years. ...
We predict proton single event effect (SEE) error rates for the VATA160 ASIC chip on the Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) to evaluate its radiation tolerance. Lacking proton test facilities, we built a Monte Carlo simulation tool named PRESTAGE to calculate the proton SEE cross-sections. PRESTAGE is based on the particle transport toolkit Geant4. It adopts a location-dependent strategy to derive the SEE sensitivity of the device from heavy-ion test data, which have been measured at the HI-13 tandem accelerator of the China Institute of Atomic Energy and the heavy-ion research facility in Lanzhou. The AP-8, SOLPRO, and August 1972 worst-case models are used to predict the average and peak proton fluxes on the DAMPE orbit. Calculation results show that the averaged proton SEE error rate for the VATA160 chip is approximately 2.17 × 10⁻⁵/device/day. Worst-case error rates for the Van Allen belts and solar energetic particle events are 1–3 orders of magnitude higher than the averaged error rate.
Hamamatsu R1924A is one of the most widely used photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) in nuclear physics. Since the active base suitable for R1924A is still not available in market, an active base is designed for Hamamatsu R1924A PMT, and the test results at high counting rates are presented. The active bases with two different sets of resistor chains were tested and compared by a frequency-controlled green straw hat LED light. A stable signal output up to 100 kHz is achieved using frequency-controlled LED pulsed light. The temperature of bases, which reflects the power consumption and is crucial for applications in vacuum, is also monitored with the same LED pulsed light. The temperature of the active base with smaller resistances reaches about twice of that of the active base with larger resistances in the resistor chain. For the applications in vacuum, the active base with resistance between the two sets of resistor chains may be preferable.
A readout system for ground-based tests of the bismuth germanium oxide (BGO) calorimeter of the Dark Matter Particle Explorer satellite is described in this paper. The system mainly consists of a data acquisition board with a field-programmable gate array to implement the control logic, and a graphical user interface software based on LabWindows/CVI. The system has been successfully applied in a series of ground-based environmental experiments and almost all the performance tests throughout the entire manufacturing processes. These contribute significantly to the development of the BGO calorimeter before being submitted for satellite-level integration.
Photomultiplier tube (PMT) modules were selected to read out the signals in the BGO electromagnetic calorimeter for the Dark Matter Particle Explorer satellite. The test procedure and the related quality control of mass production PMT modules are described, with a summary of PMT module quality and the results from tests. With strict quality control throughout the production and test process, over 88% of the PMT modules meet the criteria required by DAMPE.
Readout electronics is developed for a prototype spectrometer for in situ measurement of low-energy ions of 30 eV/e–20 keV/e in the solar wind plasma. A low-noise preamplifier/discriminator (A111F) is employed for each channel to process the signal from micro-channel plate (MCP) detectors. A high-voltage (HV) supply solution based on a HV module and a HV optocoupler is adopted to generate a fast sweeping HV and a fixed HV. Due to limitation of telemetry bandwidth in space communication, an algorithm is implemented in an FPGA (field programmable gate array) to compress the raw data. Test results show that the electronics achieves a 1 MHz event rate and a large input dynamic range of 95 pC. A slew rate of 0.8 V/μs and an integral nonlinearity of 0.7-LSB for the sweeping HV, and a precision of less than 0.8 % for the fixed HV are obtained. A vacuum beam test shows an energy resolution of 12 ± 0.7 % full width at half maximum (FWHM) is achieved, and noise counts are less than 10/sec, indicating that the performance meets the physical requirement.
This paper reports a single-chip solution for the implementation of radiation-tolerant CMOS front-end electronics (FEE) for applications requiring the acquisition of base-band sensor signals. The FEE has been designed in a 0.35 μm CMOS process, and implements a set of parallel conversion channels with high levels of configurability to adapt the resolution, conversion rate, as well as the dynamic input range for the required application. Each conversion channel has been designed with a fully-differential implementation of a configurable-gain instrumentation amplifier, followed by an also configurable dual-slope ADC (DS ADC) up to 16 bits. The ASIC also incorporates precise thermal monitoring, sensor conditioning and error detection functionalities to ensure proper operation in extreme environments. Experimental results confirm that the proposed topologies, in conjunction with the applied radiation-hardening techniques, are reliable enough to be used without loss in the performance in environments with an extended temperature range (between -25 and 125 °C) and a total dose beyond 300 krad.
The Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is a scientific satellite designed to search for the clue of dark matter particles for a mission period of at least 3 years. Two types of readout ASICs, named VA160 and VATA160, are adopted for the front-end electronics (FEE) to meet the design specification. Total lot screening of VA160 and VATA160 is utilized to assist in achieving levels of quality and reliability commensurate with the aerospace application. A test platform has been designed and built to provide comprehensive electric parameters acquisition during screening process of VA160 and VATA160. The system consists of a master board, a DUT board, a host PC, a DC supply power and necessary cables. The tester measures supply current, gets dynamic range and linearity of charge measurement, checks the 165-bit configuration register and verifies trigger signal output. With the test platform, the task of five rounds of electric test of over 200 chips has been finished in time, which ensured the progress of the qualification model of DAMPE mission.
The Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is being constructed as a scientific satellite to observe high energy cosmic rays in space. As a main sub-detector of DAMPE, the BGO electromagnetic calorimeter provides a wide measurement range of energy deposition of the particles traversing the detector and generates trigger information for the trigger selection module. There are 704 photomultiplier tube (PMT) dynode signals in total to generate the sub-trigger signals, which bring difficulties in design of the front end electronics (FEE) on the space-limited and power-limited satellite platform. To overcome the challenge, a front end ASIC chip, VATA160, which integrates 32 charge measurement channels with trigger, is adopted. There are 32 VATA160 chips mounted on 8 FEE-A boards for calorimeter. A performance test setup and a PMT calibration setup are built to evaluate the FEE-A board. The test results of RMS noise, linearity, trigger threshold and time walk effect are shown.
A high dynamic range readout system, consisting of a multi-dynode readout PMT and a VA32 chip, is presented. An LED system is set up to calibrate the relative gains between the dynodes, and the ADC counts per MIPs from dynode 7 are determined under cosmic-ray calibration. A dynamic range from 0.5 MIPs to 1×10 5 MIPs is achieved. © 2012 Chinese Physical Society and the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and IOP Publishing Ltd.
This paper is an introductory-level tutorial covering the charged
particle environment in the Earth's magnetosphere and its effects on
spacecraft. It provides an overview of radiation effects on spacecraft,
trapped particle morphology, and the radiation environment
The progress on developing models of the radiation environment since the 1960s is reviewed with emphasis on models that can be applied to predicting the performance of microelectronics used in spacecraft and instruments. Space, atmospheric, and ground environments are included. It is shown that models must be adapted continually to account for increased understanding of the dynamics of the radiation environment and the changes in microelectronics technology. The IEEE Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conference is a vital forum to report model progress to the radiation effects research community.