PON Upgrade of the Sardinia radio Telescope
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SRT Inaugural Ceremony
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RFI Monitoring
The fixed RF station
Basically, the fixed stations operating at the SRT can be divided in four main components:
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Antennas: mainly log periodic dipole arrays (LPDA), optimized Yagis, dual-ridge horns. All of them are placed on top of a tower: they can rotate in azimuth and change linear polarization (or are simply tilted by 45 degrees).
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Front-end boxes installed immediately below the antennas: they utilize commercial active and passive microwave components for filtering, switching and pre-amplifying the incoming signals. All electrical specifications are selected after a detailed study of their tradeoffs for sensitivity, robustness, and bandwidths.
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Back-ends: we mainly use spectrum analyzers for the data acquisition and telecommunications receivers and displays for the identification of the interferers. We currently utilize only coaxial cables to feed the back-ends, but we have also plans to substitute them with optical fibers.
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Control system: a PC, various interface cards, rotor and front-end controllers, and software programs take supervision of the whole system.
The fixed RFI station can operate automatically unattended in order to guarantee continuous data acquisition and RFI monitoring 24 h/day. This feature can produce a database statistically significant for all research that may follow.
