Hardware implementation of a wavelet-based radio frequency interference mitigation algorithm for microwave radiometers

Radio-frequency interference (RFI) is a serious problem in microwave radiometry. If the RFI produces a detectable increase in the power detected by the radiometer it can be flagged and data discarded, but when the RFI is comparable or smaller than the natural variability, it is difficult to detect, and the retrieved geophysical parameters become erroneous [1]. A wavelet-based RFI-mitigation technique is implemented in hardware. The interfering signal is estimated by using the powerful denoising capabilities of the wavelet transform. Then, this estimate of the RFI signal is subtracted from the total received signal to obtain a RFI-mitigated noise signal [2]. The system data output rate is the same as the data input rate, allowing continuous mode operation without saturating memory.