Digital Receiver

Digital Receiver

Involved IRA scientists, technicians and collaborators: G. Tuccari, R. Keller, S. Buttaccio, M. Nalbach, G. Nicotra, M. Wunderlich

It is today possible to start thinking a receiver for radioastronomy as a system producing a numerical more than an analog output. Indeed mainly the further signal process is often realized still down-converting the received portion of band in sub-bands before the conversion in the digital domain, where operations like recording or immediate use for correlation, spectrum analysis, total power measurement, etc. are easier to be realized.

Adopting the idea to directly sample the RF signal, after having it appropriately amplified and conditioned in order to prepare for the analog to digital conversion process, opens new possibilities and interesting perspectives. Data transfer is then greatly simplified so as signal integrity. The sooner it is possible to produce a numerical representation of the received information, the better is in terms of data utilization.

With this aim MPI and IRA are proposing to test this possibility and an L band receiver, to be mainly used for VLBI, will be realized in 'digital version'. MPI is interested in producing such a receiver version for the Effelsberg antenna, while IRA made in the past a little experience with such system with its L and S band receivers and now it's also interested to produce a digital version of a receiver placed in the Noto or Medicina telescope. The new receiver for Effelsberg operates in two ranges 1.200-1.536 MHz and 1.536-1.800 MHz.

INAF - ISTITUTO DI RADIOASTRONOMIA