The MARGIE Project

by Allen Drake

For a number of years the Department has maintained ties with the Space Science Center within the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at UNH. While CATSAT may enjoy the greatest visibility, another strong tie is MARGIE (Minute of Arc Resolution Gamma Irradiation Experiment), headed up by Prof. Jim Ryan in the Physics Department and his project manager, John Macri. Collaborating faculty in the ECE Department are Frank Hludik, Rich Messner, and Allen Drake.

The purpose of MARGIE is to map the heavens for sources of gamma ray bursts, entailing the measurement of both the angle of origin as well as the strength of each burst. A special cadmium-zinc-telluride detector array is under development, while the majority of electrical engineering skills are being applied to the design of the front-end electronics, which will handle the pulses as they come in from the detector. Such quantities as the height of each pulse and its timing have to be measured, and automated decisions have to be made, such as whether to keep a pulse because it is good data or to throw it away because it is noise. Mixed signal processing is a major component of this effort, and a number of ECE student projects have been the result. Brian Dann recently completed a master's thesis in this area, and Robert Frohman just finished a senior project. Kipp Larson, who received his B.S. in physics from R.P.I., is now commencing master's level research within the ECE Department.

It appears likely that more funding from NASA is imminent, and when this is received, the mixed signal processing will be implemented with analog and digital ASIC design tools available within the ECE Department at UNH and at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The project is presently looking for a Ph.D. level graduate student who can coordinate the electrical engineering effort between Oak Ridge and the ECE Department. Pushing the frontiers of physics and electrical engineering as required in this project is both demanding and exciting.