EARS: Mitigating Ultra-Faint Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) to Enable Radio Cosmology

射电宇宙学是美国射电天文学界的主要目标之一，有可能揭示宇宙第一批恒星的诞生，测量暗能量，并揭示星系形成的历史。来自遥远宇宙的信号非常微弱，只有十亿分之一瓦的千分之一。 重要的信号存在于商业广播频段中。相比之下，月球反射的电视和无线电信号是相当明亮的。这项研究将发现并消除来自太空垃圾反射和超地平线大气折射（逆海市蜃楼）等来源的最微弱的人为无线电干扰。此外，这项研究将开发和发布开源软件，以帮助消除世界各地任何射电望远镜的超微弱射频干扰（RFI）。这笔赠款还将扩大华盛顿社区学院转学计划，该计划利用本科研究帮助社区学院学生转学到四年制大学，主修物理或工程，自然增加了这些STEM领域的性别平衡和多样性。射电宇宙学是现代射电天文学“再电离时代”观测的重大挑战，这是天文学和天体物理学十年调查的射电、毫米波和亚毫米波小组确定的最高优先级中等规模项目的目标。 在开发测量这些来自遥远宇宙的异常微弱信号所需的仪器和分析技术方面已经取得了巨大进展。研究人员将开发用于识别和消除超微弱RFI的工具，在再电离时代数据上演示新技术，并向天文学界免费发布代码。作为这项提案的一部分，调查人员将在其中一名调查人员开发的非常成功的社区学院转学计划的基础上，将其扩大到包括电气工程和物理学生。他们将每年招收4名学生，专注于天线的性能和提出的数字升级。研究人员将安装天线，并让本科生研究硬件，数字系统和RFI之间的非线性相互作用。

Radio cosmology is one of the major goals of the US radio astronomy community and has the potential to reveal the birth of the Universe's first stars, measure Dark Energy, and reveal the history of galaxy formation. The signal from the distant universe is extraordinarily faint, a thousandth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a Watt. The important signals are found in the commercial broadcast bands. In comparison reflections of TV and radio transmissions off the moon is quite bright. This research will find and remove the very faintest man-made radio interference from sources such as space junk reflections and over-the-horizon atmospheric refraction (inverse mirages). In addition, this research will develop and release open source software to help remove ultra-faint Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) at any radio telescope around the world. This grant will also expand the University of Washington Community College Transfer Program that uses undergraduate research to help community college students transfer to four year universities and major in physics or engineering, naturally increasing the gender balance and diversity of these STEM fields. Radio Cosmology is the grand challenge of modern radio astronomy "Epoch of Reionization" observations, which were the goal of the highest priority mid-scale project identified by the Radio, Millimeter, and Submillimeter Panel of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey. There has been great progress in developing the instruments and analysis techniques needed to measure these extraordinarily faint signals from the distant universe. The investigators will develop the tools for identifying and removing ultra-faint RFI, demonstrate the new techniques on Epoch of Reionization data, and freely release the code to the astronomical community. As a part of this proposal, the investigators will build on the very successful Community College Transfer Program developed by one of the investigators, expanding it to include electrical engineering as well as physics students. They will recruit 4 students a year to focus on the performance of the antenna and proposed digital upgrades. The investigators will install an antenna and have undergraduate students investigate non-linear interactions between the hardware, digital system and RFI.