Auxiliary antenna-assisted interference mitigation for radio astronomy arrays

Interferometric image synthesis in radio astronomy is plagued by signal corruption from man-made sources. The very weak signals of interest can be overwhelmed by such interference. Recent work has proposed using array signal processing techniques of adaptive beamforming, adaptive filtering, and subs...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on signal processing 2005-02, Vol.53 (2), p.439-451
Main Authors: Jeffs, B.D., Li, L., Warnick, K.F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptive arrays
Antenna arrays
Applied sciences
Array signal processing
Detection, estimation, filtering, equalization, prediction
Exact sciences and technology
Image generation
Information, signal and communications theory
Interference
interference cancellation
Noise cancellation
Noise level
Radio astronomy
Radio interferometry
Signal and communications theory
Signal processing
Signal to noise ratio
Signal, noise
spatial filtering
Studies
subspace projection
Telecommunications and information theory
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Summary:Interferometric image synthesis in radio astronomy is plagued by signal corruption from man-made sources. The very weak signals of interest can be overwhelmed by such interference. Recent work has proposed using array signal processing techniques of adaptive beamforming, adaptive filtering, and subspace projection to remove interference prior to image synthesis. In some practical scenarios, we have found poor cancellation performance when using such methods. Because signal-of-interest levels in radio astronomy (RA) are usually well below the noise, even interference to noise ratios (INR) less than unity can affect signal estimation. At these low INRs, it is difficult to estimate interference parameters or statistics with sufficient accuracy for high-performance adaptive cancellation or subspace projection. By adding a few (one to three) low-gain (relative to the primary telescope dishes) "auxiliary" antennas to an array, it is possible to overcome this problem. This paper will show that using such antennas (e.g. commercial-grade 3-m dishes) with an existing array can significantly improve interference rejection. New extensions to subspace projection spatial filtering methods are presented, along with analytical and simulated results for performance comparison.
ISSN:1053-587X
1941-0476
DOI:10.1109/TSP.2004.840787