FFTS based RFI monitoring for Onsala Space Observatory

Abstract

The quality of radio astronomical scientific data can be greatly affected by radio frequency interference (RFI). With the increasing demand for wireless communications, the RFI environment is becoming more and more hostile and as a result, radio astronomical signals are becoming more susceptible to man-made disturbances. It is therefore necessary to find solutions by which RFI in an astronomical signal can be determined and successfully mitigated so that the underlying information can be preserved. For this purpose a software application has been developed in this thesis which can be used to successfully identify RFI in an astronomical signal. This application utilizes a signal processing device called Interconnect Break-out-Board (iBOB) for providing real time power spectral density (PSD) estimates with 2048 (4096 real samples per spectrum) frequency channels of the captured signal. The Spectral Kurtosis Algorithm has been implemented in MATLAB for the analysis of the data captured by the iBOB. This algorithm utilizes the PSD estimates for the calculation and flagging of RFI.