Detector Emulation for Athena WFI Performance Verification

The WFI is an X-ray camera on-board the space-based observatory Athena. Its signal processing chain reaches from the detection of incoming photons to the transmission to the spacecraft. The focus of this work lies on the performance verification of the WFI signal processing chain. Therefore, a novel method is applied which substitutes the detector by a programmable real-time emulator, realized in a HW/SW codesign. With specific developed models and an FPGA-based hardware, observations of objects in space in combination with detector characteristics of the later flight camera under environmental conditions can be reproduced in a laboratory setup.