TC253 EMCCD Camera Design FPGA-based Digital Control System

The electron multiplication charge-coupled device (EMCCD) can amplify electrons during its serial transfer process by using a specific gain register on chip. This feature makes it possess high sensitivity to image low-light-level targets with very low readout noise even when its read-out rate is high. In order to understand the characteristics of EMCCD better and master the techniques which could be applied to low light imaging, we take an EMCCD component TC253manufactured by TI as image sensor, and develop an EMCCD imaging system for two-dimensional astronomical photon counting experiments.In the process of this research, we take a frame transfer TC253EMCCD manufactured by TI to develop an EMCCD imaging system. Based on the FPGA chip of Cyclone III series made by Altera Company, we adopt the SOPC embedded programming system to conduct a detailed study on the TC253digital control system, and design a timing sequence generator and an image controller which we named as digital control system of EMCCD camera, also test the hardware and software of this system. In this dissertation, first we introduce the working principle of the EMCCD camera and some key devices used in the system, includes the EMCCD chip TC253, the analog signal processor AD9845B and the FPGA chip EP3C16Q240C8N. Then we present the requirements of main clock signals of the system, and focus on the description of hardware design process of the camera timing generator based on FPGA by VHDL under the development environment of Quartus II. The simulating and testing waveforms are also shown. Finally, we present the developing process of SOPC embedded programming system, including the hardware configuration of SOPC system based on FPGA and the programming for the Nios software system. This thesis also provides the first optical image of an object taken by this EMCCD imaging system, and gives a short analysis and explanation for the related results. These research works of this thesis are supported by the Joint Fund of Astronomy of Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)(Grant No.10978013).