Radio frequency interference mitigation with phase‐only adaptive beam forming

Abstract

Connected radio interferometers are sometimes used in the tied array mode: signals from antenna elements are coherently added and the sum signal applied to a very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) back‐end or pulsar‐processing machine. Usually, there is no computer‐controlled amplitude weighting in the existing radio interferometer facilities. Radio frequency interference (RFI) mitigation with phase‐only adaptive beam forming is proposed for this mode of observation. Small phase perturbations are introduced in each of the antenna's signals. The values of these perturbations are optimized in such a way that the signal from a radio source of interest is preserved and RFI signals are suppressed. An evolutionary programming algorithm is used for this task. Computer simulations, made for both one‐dimensional and two‐dimensional array setups, show considerable suppression of RFI and acceptable changes to the main array beam in the radio source direction.