BLASTbus electronics: general-purpose readout and control for balloon-borne experiments
Abstract
We present the second generation BLASTbus electronics. The primary purposes of this system are detector readout, attitude control, and cryogenic housekeeping, for balloon-borne telescopes. Readout of neutron transmutation doped germanium (NTD-Ge) bolometers requires low noise and parallel acquisition of hundreds of analog signals. Controlling a telescope's attitude requires the capability to interface to a wide variety of sensors and motors, and to use them together in a fast, closed loop. To achieve these different goals, the BLASTbus system employs a flexible motherboard-daughterboard architecture. The programmable motherboard features a digital signal processor (DSP) and field-programmable gate array (FPGA), as well as slots for three daughterboards. The daughterboards provide the interface to the outside world, with versions for analog to digital conversion, and optoisolated digital input/output. With the versatility afforded by this design, the BLASTbus also finds uses in cryogenic, thermometry, and power systems. For accurate timing control to tie everything together, the system operates in a fully synchronous manner. BLASTbus electronics have been successfully deployed to the South Pole, and flown on stratospheric balloons.
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Cite
@article{arxiv.1407.1882,
title = {BLASTbus electronics: general-purpose readout and control for balloon-borne experiments},
author = {S. J. Benton and P. A. Ade and M. Amiri and F. E. Angilè and J. J. Bock and J. R. Bond and S. A. Bryan and H. C. Chiang and C. R. Contaldi and B. P. Crill and M. J. Devlin and B. Dober and O. P. Doré and C. D. Dowell and M. Farhang and J. P. Filippini and L. M. Fissel and A. A. Fraisse and Y. Fukui and N. Galitzki and A. E. Gambrel and N. N. Gandilo and S. R. Golwala and J. E. Gudmundsson and M. Halpern and M. Hasselfield and G. C. Hilton and W. A. Holmes and V. V. Hristov and K. D. Irwin and W. C. Jones and Z. D. Kermish and J. Klein and A. L. Korotkov and C. L. Kuo and C. J. MacTavish and P. V. Mason and T. G. Matthews and K. G. Megerian and L. Moncelsi and T. A. Morford and T. K. Mroczkowski and J. M. Nagy and C. B. Netterfield and G. Novak and D. Nutter and R. O'Brient and R. W. Ogburn and E. Pascale and F. Poidevin and A. S. Rahlin and C. D. Reintsema and J. E. Ruhl and M. C. Runyan and G. Savini and D. Scott and J. A. Shariff and J. D. Soler and N. E. Thomas and A. Trangsrud and M. D. Truch and C. E. Tucker and G. S. Tucker and R. S. Tucker and A. D. Turner and D. Ward-Thompson and A. C. Weber and D. V. Wiebe and E. Y. Young},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1407.1882},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Presented at SPIE Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V, June 23, 2014. To be published in Proceedings of SPIE Volume 9145