Reference design of deformable mirror electronics for ELT systems

One of the first ELT AO systems to be deployed will be NFIRAOS of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). NFIRAOS is currently being designed at the National Research Council of Canada's Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics (HIA). NFIRAOS incorporates deformable mirrors with much larger number of actuators than in current AO systems. To aid the procurement of electronics for NFIRAOS DMs, a reference design is under way at the HIA. We have designed the overall architecture, defined a command communication interface and developed a compact and cost-efficient high voltage amplifier suitable for duplicating in 7673 copies for driving the two NFIRAOS DMs.