Development of a prototype of the ME readout electronics onboard the HXMT satellite

A prototype of the ME readout electronics onboard the Hard X-ray Modulate Telescope (HXMT) satellite is developed. Application Specific Integrated Chip (ASIC) is used to construct the front end electronics due to a large number of detectors. Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is connected to the ASIC as a state machine controller and data FIFO in the DAQ system. A USB board is designed to communicate between the DAQ system and the computer. The design goals and features, the operation of the system and the preliminary performance of the prototype are described. The testing results show that the design goals of the prototype system have been achieved.