Radio Frequency Interference Monitoring at Sardinia Radio Telescope

Abstract

Radio frequency interference monitoring is a crucial task to protect the radio astronomical observations from artificial signals. This task started at the Sardinia Radio Telescope in the early 2000s and still successfully continues by monitoring the frequency bands of the current and future telescope receivers. Since 2009 this monitoring has been routinely performed by means mainly of a state-of-the-art technology mobile laboratory up to 40 GHz. In addition, more recently a new software tool has been installed in the telescope control room to monitor in real-time the intermediate frequency baseband of the operating telescope receiver into the background of an astronomical observation. We present a summary of the results of the radio interference monitoring performed around the telescope by the SRT mobile laboratory in the last years. Furthermore, we describe the main features of the new software tool and show some preliminary results obtained during a recent monitoring of the C-high receiver baseband. The final discussion presents what we are doing to define a radio protect zone around the telescope site.