The Instrument Control Unit processing hardware and software of the Wide Field Monitor on eXTP

The eXTP (enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry) mission is a joint large mission of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and European partners designed to study the state of matter under extreme conditions of density, gravity and magnetism. One of the four major instruments on eXTP is the Wide Field Monitor (WFM) which consist of 3 pairs of coded mask cameras with a total combined Field of View (FoV) of 90×180 degrees at zero response.

With its enormous FoV, a source localization accuracy of 1 arcmin and an energy range of 2-50 keV the primary objective of the WFM is to provide triggers for the pointing instruments on the eXTP with less than one day reaction time. Its large area and resolution will be enough to detect state changes in compact objects as well.

The WFM instrument is controlled by the Data Handling Unit located inside the Instrument Control Unit. The challenging requirement of broadcasting time and end-position of the triggering event to end-users in 30s necessitates special on-board data processing software (the eXTP burst online trigger, or XBOT), a hardware that can perform such processing and associated control software that would feed the raw data from the cameras into the XBOT and relaying alerts to the on-board data handling unit on the spacecraft side.

Moreover, the WFM software performs several tasks related to the science data preparation, telecommand and telemetry management, and control of the cameras utilizing four LEON4 processing cores of E698 PM SoC from OCE Technology. This presentation discusses the details of the processing hardware and the interaction between different software components of the WFM on eXTP.