Wideband RFI Monitor Requirements, Design, and Commissioning at DRAO

TL;DR

This paper details the design, deployment, and commissioning of a wideband radio frequency interference monitor at DRAO, capable of high-resolution transient detection and long-term environment characterization.

Contribution

It introduces a novel RFI monitor with enhanced calibration, stability, and applications, including a new method to assess gain drift effects on data integration.

Findings

The monitor supports 2 GHz bandwidth with ~100 Hz channel resolution.

It operates as both a transient detector and environment characterization tool.

A new method for calculating gain drift effects was derived.

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce the radio frequency interference monitor deployed at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory. It provides 2 GHz of instantaneous bandwidth, supporting channel bandwidths as fine as ~100 Hz for 1 s integrations, or integration times as low as ~50 ms for the standard 3.33 kHz channel bandwidth. After operating as a prototype instrument for several years, the monitor was commissioned to improve the calibration method, analog section temperature, and gain stability. It now operates both as a transient detector and as a long-term radio environment characterization tool. We introduce novel applications for the monitor and derive a new method for calculating the effect of gain drift on integrated data.