Signal Processing Technologies

Radio signals from cosmic objects have a very wide bandwidth and are generally ‘noise-like’ rather than repetitive. This makes them very different from the telecommunications signals that most off-the-shelf signal-processing systems are designed to handle, so radio telescopes need purpose-built signal processors.

Our areas of signal-processing expertise include:

• construction of high-speed wideband sampling circuits and digital signal processors, especially for spectrometry
• computer control of signal processors, particularly correlators
• production of highly stable frequency-reference systems for interferometers
• data transfer, especially analogue transfer of very-wide-band signals over fibre optics.