The electronic workshop

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.

IASF-PA Electronic Workshop activities is mainly related to design & development of:

  • 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.


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