The Electronic Workshop

Electronic Workshop in brief
Electronic Equipment
Internal Reports & Patent  
Main workshop activities.
Team
Available Instruments 

Electronic Workshop in brief

IASF-PA Electronic Workshop designs and develops electronic equipments for astrophysical experiments. Other than his institutional work with INAF, IASF-PA Electronic Workshop also collaborates with other Scientific Institution to design specific electronic equipments (INFN, CNR, Physics Department of Palermo University, Private Companies). IASF-PA Electronic Workshop designs electronic apparatuses starting from specific requirements and uses the latest technology for the ultimate scientific instruments development.

IASF-PA Electronic Workshop activity fully covers the experiment development chain: 

• instruments manufacturing & calibration
• experimental set-up arrangement for physical data measurements
• experiment management using Host Computers

• Front-End for very fast photon detectors
• high speed storage & data acquisition systems
• high speed transmission interfaces

To reach the excellence in the field of electronic design, IASF-PA Electronic Workshop uses the latest and advanced techniques and a continuous effort is done to maintain the know-how up to date following the state of the art in the field of:

• very fast & low noise Front-End design
• microelectronic high density PCB design (SMD components)
• high density and high speed firmware design (FPGA)
• high speed transmission interface design (std BUS like SATA, USB, ultra-SCSI )
• CAD development & simulation design (OrCad, Pspice, Quartus, VHDL)
• software drivers development & hardware management (.NET SDK Platform, C, Visual C++, C#, LabView)

Today IASF-PA Electronic Workshop has know-how and technical resources to perform activities suitable for new and manifold scientific investigation criteria.

Electronic Workshop’s equipment

•   Termo-Vacuum Chamber, -80°C ÷ +120°C, 1mBar, cm 50 x 50 x 50 useful space, Angelantoni mod. UD150C

• 4 channels, 1.5 Ghz bandwith, 8 G/sample Digital Oscilloscope, Le Croy LC684D

• 4 channels, 0.5 Ghz bandwith, 2 G/sample Digital Oscilloscope, Tektronix TDS640A

• 1 G/sample Arbitrary Waveform Generator, Tektronix AWG510

• Dual channels, 150 Mhz Pulse Generator, HP 8110A

• 225 Mhz Universal Counter, HP 53131A

• Programmable Automatic RLC Meter, Philips PM6304

• Synthesizer Function Generator, HP 3325A

• EG&G Ortec model 439 Digital Current Integrator

• Others NIM EG&G Ortec standard modules

• Power Supply, several voltage & power range, HP series, Elind series

• Pcs Windows platform

• TFT Panasonic portable ruggized computer

• Solder apparatus for Surface Mount Devices

• CAD, OrCad, Pspice

• CAD, Altera Quartus & MaxPlus

Software for drivers development & hardware management:

• .NET SDK Platform

• C, Visual C++, C# (Sharp)

• Visual Basic

• LabView, graphic development language for programming & testing

• VHDL

Internal Report.

Year 2007:

• Preliminary test of an instrument module for very fast UV and Visible imaging applications.

Year 2004:

• Delphin interface, review on PC Professionale issue n°163, 0ct. 2004.

• Disk Emulator for Laboratory Prototype Hardware Interface:
  Interface that allows to access electronic prototypes and peripheral devices through the standard I/O file operation supported by all the current Operating Systems.

• Calibrazione di UVScope e di BaBy e loro confronto:
  Misure in Laboratorio e misure di fondo UV notturno del cielo.

Year 2003:

• GAW, FOV Calculation.
  Range of possible Field Of View investigation.

• Simple Target SCSI core.
  Board with Target SCSI core. Fast & safe data transfer between host and any customized peripheral.

• UvScope Detector.
  Enhanced Photon counting & Integrating Uv Detector.

Year 2002:

• GAW (Gamma Air Watch) Focal Plane and Front-End Electronics.

Year 1999:

• Lab measurements on a Multi Anode PhotoMultiplier Tube (MAPMT) Hamamatsu R5900-00-64.

Main workshop activities.

2002. “ULTRA” Experiments.
UVScope detector for atmospherical and Cherenkov phenomena observation at see level.
A IFSI -Tourin, Grenoble Institut des Science Nucléaires & LIFE-Lisboa collaboration.


2001. Co-ordinate Project - Agency 2001: “CdTe Detector”.
CdTe & CdZnTe X ray detector ( Hard X ray and soft gamma ray, EDEX).
A TESRE-Bologna, Politecnico-Milan & Brera-Observatory collaboration.

2001. “GAW” (Gamma Air Watch) Cherenkov image Telescope.
High energy (>150 Gev) wide angle multianode photomultipliers array detector.

1996-2001. “BA.BY.” (Background Bypass) Experiment.
Balloons Campaign Milo 1998, 1999, 2001.
300 - 400 nm band, UV background observation.

1990-95. England. "PLASTEX", "STAR CLUSTER", "T&T" Experiments.
LST (Limited Streamer Tubes) & RPC (Resistive Plate Chambers) in a large Array Detectors for EAS observation.
Leeds Physics’ Department and INFN-Naples collaboration.

1989. “HPGSPC”. SAX satellite Experiment.
"Dual Constant Fraction Timing" for HPGSPC detector. Burst Lenght electronic discriminating X ray from Cosmic background, in 3÷120 Kev energy range.

1978-89. “FIGARO” Experiment. Balloons Campaign Milo 1982, 1986, Australia 1988.
Crab & Vela pulsars observation. cmq 3600 NaI(Tl) detector.
A CESR-Tolouse, CEN-Saclay, Rome Physics’ Department and IAS-Frascati collaboration.


1972-73. “Gamma 1.10 Mev”. Balloons Campaign Birgi 1972, Milo, 1973.
1-10 Mev". Gamma radiation observation, phenomena originated by Cherenkov effects.
A LFCTR-Milan collaboration

Team.

Gaetano Agnetta

Francesco Russo

Last Modification: Wednesday, December 16 2009
Edit by Francesco Russo