Developing Real-time Coordination Pipelines in the Era of Time-Domain Radio Astronomy

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This project will capitalize on synergies between Prof. Ue-Li Pen's world-leading expertise in combining data from multiple telescopes and Huawei Canada's deep research and development capabilities in telecommunications. Through this partnership, they will investigate (1) methods to simultaneously calibrate radio signals at multiple antennas in real-time, and (2) the use of AI-powered phone cameras to optically identify astronomical interlopers (e.g., planes, satellites) that are difficult to filter out of radio astronomical observations, also in real-time. The program will have several far-reaching benefits and will reinforce Canada's technical leadership in radio astronomy and telecommunications. Scientifically, advances to real-time phase calibration will be applicable to similar challenges faced by radio astronomers seeking to localize transient phenomena, like enigmatic fast radio bursts that are normally observable for only a few milliseconds before disappearing forever. The interloper study will provide a much needed technique to clean up radio signals, and could potentially lead to an extremely economical optical complement to conventional radio astronomy. This project also has the potential to deliver immense benefits to ordinary Canadians and to Canadian productivity. The partners' work to combine radio signals will address the challenge of increasing mobile bandwidth without needing to build ever more cell towers. Their approach to applying radio astronomy techniques to telecommunications networks will help ensure Canada becomes an international leader in 6G and related technologies. The proposed network of time-synchronized, AI-powered optical monitoring developed through the interloper study could form the basis of a powerful intelligent sensor network, with applications in transportation, resource extraction, construction, security, logistics, and climate change monitoring.