Floating Gate

Radiation testing of CELESTA satellite inside CHARM facility
CELESTA, the first CERN-driven satellite, will enter orbit during the maiden flight of Europe’s Vega-C launch vehicle. It will be launched by the European Space Agency from the French Guiana Space Centre (CSG) in July 2022 (see 14/07/2022 News article below). (Image: CERN)

The Floating Gate DOSimeter (FGD0S) is a digital radiation sensor based. Sensor output is a frequency modulated pulse train proportional to radiation dose. Internal counters allow radiaton dose digital value to be read via SPI interface. This sensor, due to its higher sensitivity and lower noise than RadFet, is proposed as a new solution that can replace the latter and bring improvements in the quality of dosimetry.

The sensor is already used by CERN's new radiation monitoring systems, namely the wireless IoT monitoring system, also called BatMon [1], and the SpaceRadMon [2], but due to its great versatility and ease of integration, its use in many other systems is planned. The study of its possible applicability in other fields as well, is under continuous development as demonstrated in [3].

References:

[1] A. Zimmaro et al., "Testing and Validation Methodology for a Radiation Monitoring System for Electronics in Particle Accelerators," in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. 69, no. 7, pp. 1642-1650, July 2022, doi: 10.1109/TNS.2022.3158527.

[2] https://kt.cern/aerospace/spaceradmon

[3] M. Rizzo, M. Brucoli, S. Danzeca, A. Masi, À. Pineda and B. Servera Mas, "An Enhanced Sensitivity Operation Mode for Floating Gate Dosimeters," in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. 69, no. 8, pp. 1876-1883, Aug. 2022, doi: 10.1109/TNS.2022.3185397.