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Low power proximity electronics for dust analysers based on light scattering

The present paper focuses on the development of an optimized version of the Proximity Electronics (PE) for dust analysers based on static light scattering. This kind of instruments, aimed to the systematic measurement of the size of dust grains in Martian atmosphere, was developed by the Cosmic Physics and Planetology Group at the INAF Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte (OAC) and University Parthenope (LFC group), in Naples, Italy. One of these instruments, the MEDUSA Experiment, was selected for the Humboldt Payload of the ExoMars mission, the first mission to Mars of the ESA Aurora Programme. Thereafter, this mission was revised because of increasing costs and lack of funds and the MEDUSA experiment has been completely re-engineered to meet more demanding constraints of mass and power consumption. The dust analyser under development is named MicroMED, as it is a lighter and more compact version of MEDUSA. MicroMED is provided with an Optical System (OS) based on the same concept of the one present in MEDUSA, but with a low power PE and low power laser source. This paper reports the features and the tests results of three versions of low power PE developed for MicroMED, and also compares two basic approaches, one based on a linear amplifier, derived from the solution implemented in two different MEDUSA breadboards (B/Bs), and the other one based on a logarithmic amplifier, with better performance in terms of compactness and low power consumption.