Design of a Support Electronics and Data Acquisition Package for Next Generation Infrared Focal Place Arrays

Wallace Instruments proposes to design a flexible and high performance electronic and data acquisition system that will operate all current and next generation Infrared Focal Plane Arrays (IRFPA's). This system will allow new IRFPA's to be used in the field almost immediately upon their release, eliminating the long delays and high costs associated with designing and building custom support systems. Surveys of DoD and civilian researchers will determine features and performance goals for the system. Surveys of IRFPA manufacturers will ensure that the system will operate with all next generation IRFPA's. Additional system objectives are compact size, moderate cost, and ease of use. The system will be configured for different IRFPA's with software, and will not require hardware or wiring changes when changing IRFPA's. Key areas of development will include high speed IRFPA drive electronics and preamplifiers, very fast high resolution multichannel data acquisition, signal processors for data reduction, and optical fiber data interfaces. Breadboard experiments will verify the technical feasbility of the performance objectives. Successful completion of this work will lead directly to the construction and evaluation of a complete system in the Phase II program.