RFI mitigation in radio astronomy

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Technical advances in electromagnetics, signal processing and processing powerhave led to a significant increase in sensitivity and accuracy in radio telescopes.With this increase in sensitivity, radio frequency interference (RFI) has become amuch larger problem. The notable growth in wireless communication as well asself generated RFI has further escalated this problem. In order to utilise the fullcapabilities of modern radio telescopes, RFI mitigation is required on the capturedsignals. With the enormous data rates of modern radio telescopes, managing RFIhas become increasingly difficult, and in order to utilise the full captured radiospectrum, more accurate RFI mitigation strategies will be necessary.The use of different RFI mitigation strategies is studied in the form of onlineand offline techniques. This includes Spectral Kurtosis, Spectral Flatness and theVar/SumThreshold method. The special case for RFI mitigation in timing pulsarswill also be studied. These techniques are well known in the radio astronomy community;here, spectral kurtosis and spectral flatness will be implemented on the rawdata as well as the post correlated data. System speed and accuracy will be thedeciding factors when testing these methods as possible solutions to this problem.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University