RFI Journal Club

Speaker: Tommy Marshman — PhD student at Macquarie University and the CSIRO Australia National Telescope Facility

Title:  Characterizing and mitigating Bluetooth and WiFi radio frequency interference at the Parkes Observatory

Abstract:

Radio frequency interference (RFI) in the 2.4 GHz band is widely regarded as a major obstacle to radio astronomy observations, leading many observers to discard this frequency range entirely. In this talk, I present a detailed characterisation of the WiFi and Bluetooth RFI around Murriyang, CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope, based on several years of monitoring data. Their temporal and directional behaviour is examined to understand how the local RFI environment evolves over time.

Using high-time-resolution voltage data from observations of the Vela Pulsar (PSR J0835−4510), I demonstrate that the impact of RFI is far less severe than often assumed.  The majority of the band remains unaffected. I compare the performance of three RFI detection and mitigation techniques and show that all are capable of effectively identifying and excising interference, with suitability for real-time implementation.

These results indicate that the 2.4 GHz band can be transformed from a largely unusable observing band into a productive scientific resource. In particular, a simple power-thresholding approach offers an efficient and practical path toward real-time RFI mitigation, increasing the accessible fraction of this 128 MHz band from less than 30% to more than 90%.

Attend via Zoom here: https://nrao-edu.zoom.us/j/92201780033?pwd=QUxock9WczdDdUtOWjNPQWswRW5rQT09