DAMPE silicon tracker on-board data compression algorithm

TL;DR

This paper presents an on-board data compression algorithm for DAMPE's silicon tracker, addressing the challenge of managing large data volumes from high-resolution silicon micro-strip detectors in space.

Contribution

It introduces a novel data compression algorithm specifically designed for the silicon tracker in the DAMPE satellite, optimizing data handling onboard.

Findings

Algorithm effectively reduces data volume

Verified with cosmic-ray measurements

Enhances data transmission efficiency

Abstract

The Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is an upcoming scientific satellite mission for high energy gamma-ray, electron and cosmic rays detection. The silicon tracker (STK) is a sub detector of the DAMPE payload with an excellent position resolution (readout pitch of 242um), which measures the incident direction of particles, as well as charge. The STK consists 12 layers of Silicon Micro-strip Detector (SMD), equivalent to a total silicon area of 6.5m$^2$. The total readout channels of the STK are 73728, which leads to a huge amount of raw data to be dealt. In this paper, we focus on the on-board data compression algorithm and procedure in the STK, which was initially verified by cosmic-ray measurements.