Pre-amplification for electron density measurement in the ionosphere

Abstract

The electronics group at the physics institute has developed an instrument called ’Multi-Needle Langmuir Probe’ (m-NLP) to measure electron density in plasma. This instrument flies on various space probes, e.g. on the ICI rocket series, where the latest generation of sounding rockets ejects miniature sensor platforms from the ’4DSpace module’ into the ionosphere in flight. The nanoelectronics group (NANO) at IFI is developing integrated circuits to read out the sensor measurements, called the ’Multi- Needle Integrated Circuit’ (m-NIC). The electronics to read out the sensor values, in a first step, needs to power the sensor and amplify the sensing signal current before it is passed on to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). This sensor supply and pre- amplification are summarized under the term sensor front end (FE). the task of this project is to implement a version of this FE as application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) in a specific CMOS technology, the TSMC BCD2 180nm technology.