Projects:2018s1-177 Radio astronomy with software-defined radio

Project name

Radio astronomy with software-defined radio

Project introduction

Background Due to the atomic transition of electrons, the "spin-flip" line of hydrogen emits from the universe. The frequency of these hydrogen lines is 1420. 406 MHz and they were firstly discovered by Ewen and Purcell in 1951. In recent years, as the emergence of SDR --- a new and relatively inexpensive device, amateurs can re-explore the spectrum of the hydrogen line with a small budget.

System overview This project aims to design and build up a system to observe the spectrum of hydrogen line from the universe. The system consists of three parts --- antenna, radio frequency (RF) and signal processing, and it has been built by last year's students. The system diagram is shown in the figure below.

Motivation This is a follow-up project. The experiment results from last year have some drawbacks that need to be improved in this year. Four major drawbacks are listed as follows. 1) Spurs exist in the power spectrum density plots. 2) Weak signals could be swamped. 3) The resolution is not high enough. 4) The system cannot process data in real time.

Objectives According to the limitations of last year's project, the objective of this year's project is to improve the performance of the system which has been built by the students in last year. The main goals include using a better algorithm to improve signal resolution, reducing the effects of radio interference and processing data in real time.

Team members

Hongwen Qu, Hanwen Chang

Supervisors

Dr Withawat Withayachumnankul, Dr Brian Ng