SuperAGILE onboard electronics and ground test instrumentation

In this paper we describe the electronics of the SuperAGILE X-ray imager on-board AGILE satellite and the instrumentation developed to test and improve the Front-End and digital electronics of the flight model of the imager. Although the working principle of the instrument is very well established, and the conceptual scheme simple, the budget and mechanical constraints of the AGILE small mission made necessary the introduction of new elements in SuperAGILE, regarding both the mechanics and the electronics. In fact the instrument is contained in a View the MathML source?44×44×16cm3 volume, but the required performance is quite ambitious, leading us to equip a sensitive area of View the MathML source?1350cm2 with 6144 Silicon ??strips detectors with a pitch of View the MathML source121?m and a total length of View the MathML source?18.2cm. The result is a very light and power-cheap imager with a good sensitivity (View the MathML source?15mCrab in 1 day in View the MathML source15-45keV), high angular resolution View the MathML source(6arcmin) and gross spectral resolution. The test-equipment is versatile, and can be easily modified to test FEE based on self-triggered, data-driven and sparse-readout ASICs such as XA family chips.