Polarization-based online interference mitigation in radio interferometry

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel online interference mitigation method for radio interferometry that leverages polarization information and consensus optimization to detect and reduce radio frequency interference effectively.

Contribution

It proposes a new polarization-based interference detection and mitigation technique using distributed spectrum sensing and online processing with mini-batches.

Findings

Demonstrates the feasibility of the method through extensive simulations.

Shows improved interference detection accuracy using polarization information.

Validates the online approach with real-time data processing simulations.

Abstract

Mitigation of radio frequency interference (RFI) is essential to deliver science-ready radio interferometric data to astronomers. In this paper, using dual polarized radio interferometers, we propose to use the polarization information of post-correlation interference signals to detect and mitigate them. We use the directional statistics of the polarized signals as the detection criteria and formulate a distributed, wideband spectrum sensing problem. Using consensus optimization, we solve this in an online manner, working with mini-batches of data. We present extensive results based on simulations to demonstrate the feasibility of our method.