Researchers propose new technology to improve observation sensitivity of QiTai radio telescope

The world’s strongest steerable 110-meter radio telescope, also called the QiTai radio Telescope (QTT), will probably be constructed by Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory (XAO) of the Chinese language Academy of Sciences (CAS) over a interval of six years. Its ceremony kicked off on Sept. 21, 2022.

QTT will probably be outfitted with a number of ultra-wideband (UWB) receivers, which may enhance the statement sensitivity of the telescope by rising the bandwidth. Nevertheless, it additionally poses challenges to sign acquisition, transmission and processing. As well as, the broader bandwidth will incorporate extra electromagnetic interference alerts, which is able to have an effect on the standard of astronomical statement and trigger a saturation impact on the system.

With a purpose to keep away from UWB sign phase and amplitude fluctuations attributable to environmental and temperature adjustments within the analog transmission hyperlink, researchers from XAO designed a brand new UWB sign acquisition and processing experimental system that makes use of a high-performance, low-power RFSoC circuit to straight pattern the radio-frequency sign on the receiver finish. As well as, the brand new sign acquisition circuit makes use of increased quantization accuracy to extend the dynamic vary of the obtained sign, thus avoiding saturation attributable to robust interference.

The outcomes had been printed in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific on July 24.

Aiming at real-time processing of UWB alerts, the researchers divided UWB alerts into a number of digital sub-bands, that are transmitted to the distant high-performance pc (HPC) cluster by means of 100 Gb high-speed digital fiber hyperlinks for processing.

The proposed system is extra versatile and expandable, and its management program can configure the concerned computing sources in keeping with the statement bandwidth and computational complexity. Moreover, every HPC node is configured with NVMe SSD playing cards for high-speed baseband knowledge recording to appreciate uncooked astronomical info seize and adaptive radio-frequency interference elimination.

To confirm the precise statement impact of the system, the researchers deployed it on the Nanshan 26-meter radio telescope and performed pulsar statement experiments. They discovered that the signal-to-noise ratio of the band-merged pulsar is clearly stronger than that of the unmerged single subband knowledge, which signifies that the system is working as anticipated.