NSF Award
2307581
Radio astronomy is the study of the universe by detecting and analyzing radio waves. Radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation, just like light, but with a longer wavelength. This means that radio waves can travel through dust and gas clouds, which makes them ideal for studying objects that are obscured from view in visible light. One of the challenges of radio astronomy is that there is a lot of man-made radio interference. This interference can come from things like cell phones, televisions, and radar systems. It can make it difficult to detect faint radio signals from astronomical objects. This proposal aims to address this challenge by developing new algorithms and hardware to remove radio interference from observed data. The methods will be made freely available to the astronomical community and could also be used in other fields, such as self-driving cars and collision avoidance radar.<br/><br/>The detection of extremely weak Galactic signals and the study of the radio transient sky, including fast radio bursts represent a powerful new tool for astronomy. Due to the transient nature of fast radio bursts, radio frequency interference (RFI) excision is critical and is a limiting factor for survey sensitivity. This project engages faculty, graduate students and undergraduates to address overcoming this challenge through developing ; real-time RFI detection, characterization, and flagging ; hardware prototyping of new RFI detection and characterization algorithms ; metrics of performance tailored to different astronomical observation cases. The algorithms, firmware, and software developed will be made available for use to the world radio astronomy community through GitHub, advertised through summer RFI workshops organized at the Green Bank Observatory, and disseminated through the programs run by the NSF's SpectrumX Center. Undergraduate students will participate in the research activities through this project and the programs such as Research Apprenticeship Program and Summer Undergraduate Research Experience at West Virginia University. The new methodology developed in this work can be applied beyond radio astronomy by any groups that use radar data, for instance in the development of self-driving cars and collision avoidance radar in the automotive industry.<br/><br/>This project is jointly funded by the Division of Astronomical Sciences and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
