Development of the analog ASIC for multi-channel readout X-ray CCD camera

We report on the performance of an analog application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) developed aiming for the front-end electronics of the X-ray CCD camera system onboard the next X-ray astronomical satellite, ASTRO-H. It has four identical channels that simultaneously process the CCD signals. Distinctive capability of analog-to-digital conversion enables us to construct a CCD camera body that outputs only digital signals. As the result of the front-end electronics test, it works properly with low input noise of <= 30 mu V at the pixel rate below 100 kHz. The power consumption is sufficiently low of similar to 150 mW/chip. The input signal range of +/- 20 mV covers the effective energy range of the typical X-ray photon counting CCD (up to 20 key). The integrated non-linearity is 0.2% that is similar as those of the conventional CCDs in orbit. We also performed a radiation tolerance test against the total ionizing dose (TID) effect and the single event effect. The irradiation test using Co-60 and proton beam showed that the ASIC has the sufficient tolerance against TID up to 200 krad, which absolutely exceeds the expected amount of dose during the period of operating in a low-inclination low-earth orbit. The irradiation of Fe ions with the fluence of 5.2 x 10(8) lon/cm(2) resulted in no single event latchup (SEL), although there were some possible single event upsets. The threshold against SEL is higher than 1.68 MeV cm(2)/mg, which is sufficiently high enough that the SEL event should not be one of major causes of instrument downtime in orbit. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.