Radio frequency interference mitigation with real-time FPGA digital signal processing

The sensitivity of radio astronomy telescopes is often limited by man-made radio frequency interference due to a variety of terrestrial activities. An RFI mitigation subsystem (RFIMS) based on real-time digital signal-processing is proposed for the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope based on a powerful field programmable gate array (FPGA) processor. In this system the radio astronomy signals polluted by RFI are “cleaned” by the RFIMS before the routine backend correlation processing happens. The high temporal and frequency resolution of the RFIMS allows the detection and excision of RFI.