SPECIALIZED DETECTOR TECHNIQUES AND ELECTRONICS OF THE ERNE INSTRUMENT ONBOARD SOHO

ERNE is designed to study the composition and energy spectra of partic les encountered in interplanetary space in the energy range from 1 MeV /n to well beyond 500 MeV/n. Several innovative ideas had to be incorp orated in the design of the instrument in order to fulfill the scienti fic requirements. Position-sensitive strip detectors are used in the H igh Energy Detector (HED) for determining particle trajectories. Integ rated interstrip capacitances were designed to allow for a very simple read-out technique from the two edges of each detector. The event rec ognition, signal multiplexing and control of the pulse height analysis are based on a gate array technique. The versatility of the gate arra y also allowed an elegant realization of a number of other functions a nd instrument control tasks. By using the gate array a very compact st ructure of the digital control electronics was achieved.