Enhanced channel calibration for the image sensor of the TuMag instrument

Abstract

The Sunrise missions consist of observing the magnetic field of the sun continuously for a few days from the stratosphere. In these missions, a balloon supporting a telescope and associated instrumentation, including a Tunable Magnetograph (TuMag), is lifted into the stratosphere. In the camera of this instrument, the image sensor sends its data to a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) using eight transmission channels. These channels must be previously calibrated for a correct delivery of the image. For this mission, the FPGA has been exchanged for a newer and larger one, so the firmware has been adapted to the new device. In addition, the calibration algorithm has been parallelized as the main innovation of this work, taking advantage of the increase in logic resources of the new FPGA, in order to minimize the calibration time of the channels. The algorithm has been implemented specifically for this instrument without using the Input Serial Deserializer (ISERDES) Intellectual Property (IP), since this IP does not support the deserialization of the data sent by the image sensor to the FPGA.