An Automated V-I Acquisition System for Microbolometer Array with FPGA-based Drive

This work presents an automated acquisition system for microbolometer array. The solution is based on the case scenario where microbolometer array parameters has to be determined automatically (from an unknown device), avoiding the detector damage hazard. For this reason, a data management system is considered in the design presented. The automated acquisition system designed is driven by FPGA-based digital algorithms; these algorithms command the microbolometer power, and the signal readout from a digital to analog converter, and analog to digital converter, respectively. The data obtained, from the proposed system, are sent to a software-based application programmed in MATLAB. Considering that detector structure has a non-lineal behavior at self-heating operating condition, which leads on a device damage, the data are processed by the high level application; thereby, the FPGA-based digital algorithms are reconfigured to keep the detector at save operating conditions either forward or reverse polarization. The proposed system is a modular and flexible solution that is capable of reaching several microbolometer array configurations. The main contribution of this work yields on the automated acquisition application, where microbolometer array data can be readout and stored, preventing the detector damage caused by the self-heating condition; the data obtained can be used to determine the microbolometer array parameters, and the optimal settings to drive each detector. The system effectiveness is experimentally verified on a $19\ x\ 20$ microbolometer array.