Brian Jeffs (Brigham Young University, CASS)

Array Processing for Radio Astronomical RFI - Moving theory to Practice -- Brian Jeffs Colloquium

Abstract

Many radio astronomical instruments consist of arrays of antennas that are potentially suitable platforms for RFI mitigation with spatial filtering algorithms. The goal is to “see through” RFI rather than simply flagging, blanking, or discarding corrupted data. Methods have been proposed for conventional synthesis imaging arrays of dish antennas, low frequency aperture arrays, and new phased array feeds (PAFs) for single dish and synthesis array radio astronomy, For years the literature has discussed the promise of such techniques to open up spectral bands which have previously been off limits due to strong man-made interference. Unfortunately, very little of this work has yet migrated into regular use on real-world instruments.

We will discuss reasons for this slow adoption and argue that the discipline is approaching a critical juncture where some important science cases will be out of reach unless progress is made in moving mitigation theory into practice. Recent advances in beamforming algorithms which could make spatial adaptive filtering more attractive to the astronomical community will be presented, and some possible next steps to encourage adoption will be considered. We will also show recent work in phased array feeds, which are an excellent platform for spatial RFI mitigation.