Noise statistics in a fast digital radio receiver: the Bedlam backend for the Parkes Radio Telescope

Abstract

The digital record of the voltage in a radio telescope receiver, after frequency conversion and sampling at a finite rate, is not a perfect representation of the original analog signal. To detect and characterise a transient event with a duration comparable to the inverse bandwidth it is necessary to compensate for these effects, which modifies the statistics of the signal, making it difficult to determine the significance of a potential detection. We present an analysis of these modified statistics and demonstrate them with experimental results from Bedlam, a new digital backend for the Parkes radio telescope.

arXiv comment21 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Experimental Astronomy

References in corpus (4)

• LUNASKA experiments using the Australia Telescope Compact Array to search for ultra-high energy neutrinos and develop technology for the lunar Cherenkov technique
• UHE neutrino searches using a Lunar target: First Results from the RESUN search
• Constraints on the flux of Ultra-High Energy neutrinos from WSRT observations
• Status and Strategies of Current LUNASKA Lunar Cherenkov Observations with the Parkes Radio Telescope

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• Overview of lunar detection of ultra-high energy particles and new plans for the SKA
• Bandpass calibration of a wideband spectrometer using coherent pulse injection
• The SKA Particle Array Prototype: The First Particle Detector at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory