The Brigham Young University (BYU) Radio Astronomy group, in collaboration with Cornell University, the University of Massachusetts, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), have in recent years developed and deployed PAF systems that demonstrated the advantages of PAFs for astronomy. However, these systems lacked the necessary bandwidth and acquisition times to be scientifically viable. This thesis outlines the development of a 20-MHz bandwidth system that can acquire for much longer periods of time and across much larger bandwidths than previous BYU systems. A report of the deployment of this system on the 305-meter reflector at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is also summarized.The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is currently constructing a PAF-equipped synthesis imaging array named the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) that offers great promise for widening FOVs and enhancing RFI mitigation techniques. Previous work in RFI mitigation has demonstrated effective cancellation for synthesis imaging arrays under the assumption that the processing bandwidth is narrowband and correlator dump times are short. However, these assumptions do not necessarily reflect real-world instrument limitations. This thesis explores simulated adaptive array cancellation algorithm effectiveness as applied on the ASKAP instrument given realistic bandwidths and correlator dump times. The results demonstrate that active RFI mitigation performed across long baselines is largely ineffectual.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BGMYU2/oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-5241 |
| Date | 20 August 2014 |
| Creators | Black, Richard Allen |
| Publisher | BYU ScholarsArchive |
| Source Sets | Brigham Young University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/ |
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