Electronics and data acquisition demonstrator for a kinetic inductance camera

TL;DR

This paper presents a digital electronics prototype for real-time monitoring of large kinetic inductance detector arrays in mm-wave astronomy, utilizing FPGA-based frequency synthesis and data acquisition with minimal cabling.

Contribution

It introduces a novel FPGA-based digital frequency multiplexing system capable of instrumenting 128 pixels over 125 MHz bandwidth with simplified cabling.

Findings

Successfully monitored 128 resonators in real time

Achieved efficient frequency multiplexing with FPGA processing

Demonstrated potential for large-scale KID array readout

Abstract

A prototype of digital frequency multiplexing electronics allowing the real time monitoring of kinetic inductance detector (KIDs) arrays for mm-wave astronomy has been developed. It requires only 2 coaxial cables for instrumenting a large array. For that, an excitation comb of frequencies is generated and fed through the detector. The direct frequency synthesis and the data acquisition relies heavily on a large FPGA using parallelized and pipelined processing. The prototype can instrument 128 resonators (pixels) over a bandwidth of 125 MHz. This paper describes the technical solution chosen, the algorithm used and the results obtained.