High speed, low read noise electronics for astronomy detector arrays

A description is given of the third-generation electronics system of the Berkeley infrared camera, which offers improved frame rate, size, manufacturability, and real-time data processing power. The flexibility to operate a variety of detectors and the vast improvement in speed was achieved by using DSP56001 digital signal processors (DSPs) to serve as controllers and processing elements throughout the system. The data acquisition system has one DSP per analog channel, making the system scalable to match the sensor being used. Each channel can run at up to 1-MHz sampling rate (analog/digital limited), using 20% of the DSPs 10-30-MIPS (million instructions per second) bandwidth for interrupt-driven data acquisition and leaving 80% for background processes. The analog board is dynamically configurable and is capable of performing self-diagnostics and -calibration. The computer system hardware and software are layered, supporting real-time interrupt response down to the microsecond level. The system is the prototype for the electronics for the 1-5 μm and 8.24-μm cameras being designed for the Keck Telescope