Speaker
Description
The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) is the world's only radio telescope built from the ground up to perform the search for technosignatures, signs of technologically-capable extraterrestrial civilizations. Hosted on the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, the ATA is comprised of 42 6.1m in diameter, offset Gregorian radio telescopes. Cryogenically-cooled dual-polarized log-periodic feeds are mounted on the ATA focus, providing a broad and instantaneous Radio Frequency (RF) coverage of 1 to 10 GHz. Analog signals from each antenna are sent over fiber to a centralized signal processing room where they get amplified, mixed, and digitized with various backends.
Shortly after the SETI Institute took over the operations of the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in 2020, GNU Radio and the SETI Institute joined forces. Since then, an SDR-based digital setup was deployed as one of the backends for the ATA that allowed amateur radio activities and experiments to be pursued on a world-class radio telescope facility.
In this talk, I will describe the Allen Telescope Array refurbishment program and the technical and scientific capabilities of the facility. I will also describe the GNU Radio backend, the activities, and the results of the said experiments.
| Talk Length | 30 Minutes |
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