The statistics of low frequency radio interference at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory

Abstract

We characterize the low frequency radio-frequency interference (RFI) environment at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), the location selected for the low-frequency component of the Square Kilometre Array. Data were collected from the BIGHORNS instrument, located at the MRO, which records a contiguous bandwidth between 70 and 300 MHz, between November 2014 to March 2015 inclusive. The data were processed to identify RFI, and we describe a series of statistics in both the time and frequency domain, including modeling of the RFI occupancy and signal power as a series of distribution functions, with the goal of aiding future scientists and operation staff in observation planning.

arXiv comment6 pages, 8 figures, Electromagnetic Compatibility Conference (GEMCCON), 2015 IEEE Global

References in corpus (8)

• The Murchison Widefield Array: the Square Kilometre Array Precursor at low radio frequencies
• A morphological algorithm for improving radio-frequency interference detection
• Science with the Murchison Widefield Array
• GLEAM: The GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA survey
• The low-frequency environment of the Murchison Widefield Array: radio-frequency interference analysis and mitigation
• BIGHORNS - Broadband Instrument for Global HydrOgen ReioNisation Signal
• Characterization of a Low-Frequency Radio Astronomy Prototype Array in Western Australia
• The impact of the ionosphere on ground-based detection of the global Epoch of Reionisation signal

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• Narrow-Band Signal Localization for SETI on Noisy Synthetic Spectrogram Data
• Performance of the Segment Anything Model in Various RFI/Events Detection in Radio Astronomy
• Power spectrum multipoles and clustering wedges during the Epoch of Reionization
• System design and calibration of SITARA -- a global 21 cm short spacing interferometer prototype