Cedric Dumez-Viou

Multi-Level Pre-Correlation RFI Flagging for Real-Time Implementation on UniBoard

Because of the denser active use of the spectrum, and because of radio telescopes higher sensitivity, radio frequency interference (RFI) mitigation has become a sensitive topic for current and future radio telescope designs. Even if quite sophisticated approaches have been proposed in the recent years, the majority of RFI mitigation operational procedures are based on post-correlation corrupted data flagging. Moreover, given the huge amount of data delivered by current and next generation radio telescopes, all these RFI detection procedures have to be at least automatic and, if possible, real-time. In this paper, the implementation of a real-time pre-correlation RFI detection and flagging procedure into generic high-performance computing platforms based on field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) is described, simulated and tested. One of these boards, UniBoard, developed under a Joint Research Activity in the RadioNet FP7 European programme is based on eight FPGAs interconnected by a high speed transceiver ...

RFI mitigation at Nançay Observatory: Impulsive Signal Processing

Radio astronomy has protected frequency bands for free observations. However, it is often necessary to observe outside of those sanctuaries. For example, it is the case for HI radio-sources with high red-shifts that are observed into radarallocated frequency bands. A radar pulse blanker based on statistical analysis has been implemented in a FPGA. Several tricks has made the implementation possible at a low hardware cost. Pulsar is another kind of impulsive signal which needs specific processing. In the proposed approach, the cyclostationarity is used to discriminate between radio-frequency interference (RFI) pulses and pulsar pulses.

RFI mitigation at Nancay Observatory: Impulsive Signal Processing

Radio astronomy has protected frequency bands for free observations. However, it is often necessary to observe outside of those sanctuaries. For example, it is the case for HI radio-sources with high red-shifts that are observed into radarallocated frequency bands. A radar pulse blanker based on statistical analysis has been implemented in a FPGA. Several tricks has made the implementation possible at a low hardware cost. Pulsar is another kind of impulsive signal which needs specific processing. In the proposed approach, the cyclostationarity is used to discriminate between radio-frequency interference (RFI) pulses and pulsar pulses.

RFI mitigation: cyclostationary criterion

Radio astronomical observations are increasingly corrupted by radio frequency interferences. Thus, real- time ltering algorithms are becoming essential. One approach is to use a speci c time property of the Telecoms signals : the cyclostationarity. This property can be exploited for detection purpose or ltering purpose. In par- ticular, new generations of radio telescopes will be based on antenna arrays providing the possibility of applying spatial ltering techniques. In this paper, we compare the performance between classical approaches based on power statistics and cyclic approaches. This comparison is done through simulations on synthetic data and through simulations on real data acquired with the new generation low frequency array radio telescope, LOFAR.