AGILE, the s
mall scientific
mission of the Italian Space Agency devoted to Hard-X and Ga
mma-ray astrophysics, was successfully launched on April 23, 2007. The AGILE payload is co
mposed of a tungsten-silicon tracker (ST), operating in the ga
mma-ray energy range 30 MeV–50 GeV; Super-AGILE, an X-ray i
mager operating in the energy range 15–45 keV; the Minicalori
meter (MCAL) and an Anticoincidence shield. MCAL is a detector of about 1400 c
m2 sensitive in the range 0.3–200 MeV, that can be used both as a slave of the ST to contribute to the AGILE Ga
mma Ray i
maging Detector (GRID operative
mode) and autono
mously for detection of transient events (BURST operative
mode). MCAL is
made of 30 CsI(Tl) bar-shaped scintillation detectors with photodiode readout at both ends, arranged in two orthogonal layers. Energy and position of interaction can be derived fro
m a proper co
mposition of the signals readout at the bar's ends, absolute ti
me tagging can be achieved with a
me="mml4">method=retrieve&_udi=B6TJM-4RJYV1X-3&_mathId=mml4&_user=1067359&_cdi=5314&_rdoc=11&_acct=C000058823&_version=1&_userid=2795313&md5=244785a6f2b608173c18bec75172b228" title="Click to view the MathML source" alt="Click to view the MathML source">μs resolution. The Burst logic deals with various rate-
meters on different ti
me scales, energy bands, and MCAL spatial zones. Different algorith
ms can be chosen for Burst triggering considering also the contribution of other detectors like Super AGILE. In this paper the various trigger logic will be reviewed as well as their on-ground test perfor
med with a dedicated experi
mental setup.