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2016 Radio Frequency Interference (RFI)

THE RFI SITUATION FOR A SPACE-BASED LOW-FREQUENCY RADIO ASTRONOMY


INSTRUMENT

Mark Bentum, Albert-Jan Boonstra

University of Twente ASTRON


Department of Electrical Engineering Dwingeloo
Enschede, The Netherlands The Netherlands

ABSTRACT Lunar orbit, Earth leading/trailing orbits, Sun-Earth L2, and


the Earth-Moon Lagrangian point behind the Moon (L2).
Space based ultra-long wavelength radio astronomy has re-
When the swarm is behind the Moon, the latter can act as a
cently gained a lot of interest. Techniques to open the virtu-
shield against the RFI produced by the Earth. However, due
ally unexplored frequency band below 30 MHz are becoming
to diffraction, the RFI might bend around the Moon, and still
within reach at this moment. Due to the ionosphere and the ra-
have signicant presence at locations where there is no direct
dio interference (RFI) on Earth exploring this frequency band
line of sight to Earth, especially at the lowest frequencies.
requires a space based or Lunar surface based solution. But
The amount of RFI presence behind the Moon due to diffrac-
where to locate such a low frequency radio telescope. Several
tion is (except for RAE-B lunar orbit altitudes) not known,
parameters determine this decision, of which the RFI situation
but can be predicted.
is one of the most important ones. In this paper we will elabo-
In this paper the possible RFI at various locations will be
rate on the expected RFI levels of space-based low-frequency
discussed. In Section 2, Low Frequency radio astronomy will
instruments.
be briey discussed, including the possible locations for such
Index Terms RFI, radio astronomy, long wavelength, an instrument. In Section 3 the expected RFI sources are sum-
satellite system, space-based radio astronomy marised. To get an impression of the levels of the RFI sources,
in Section 4 existing instruments in space will be discussed
1. INTRODUCTION and obtained levels will be given. A proposal for measuring
the real RFI levels will be given and we will end with some
Opening the last frequency window for radio astronomy in the conclusions in Section 6.
sub - 30 MHz region consists of a few challenges. First of all,
at frequencies below 30 MHz the Earths ionosphere severely
2. LOW FREQUENCY RADIO ASTRONOMY
distorts radio waves originating from celestial sources, and it
completely blocks radio waves below 10 MHz. This means
In the study of cosmology, scientists try to unravel the his-
that radio astronomy and astrophysics below 30 MHz is
tory of the birth and development of the early Universe. To
best conducted from space. Secondly, the radio spectrum be-
do this, theories are developed and veried by observing the
low 30 MHz is lled with very strong transmitters signals,
Universe. However, we have never been able to observe and
making it difcult to do Earth-based radio observations of the
detect features from the earliest stages of the universe, the
universe. And thirdly, the wavelengths of the signals are in
so-called Dark Ages, when the rst stars and galaxies were
the order of tens of meters, meaning that discrete antenna el-
formed. Signals from this epoch can be found in the radio
ements and antenna arrays are needed as dishes become very
frequency range below 30 MHz, but in spite of the exciting
inefcient. Because large baselines are needed for spatial res-
science, this frequency range has yet to be explored. Another
olutions down to arc minutes, array antennas in phased array
interesting science topic is the search for planets outside our
mode and in aperture synthesis mode are the only feasible
solar system, exoplanets. Planets with a strong magnetic eld
option in space. Such a distributed array in space with base-
that can strongly radiate at low frequencies.
lines up to tens of kilometres poses challenges such as inter-
Low frequency radio astronomy gains a lot of attention
antenna communication bandwidth and electric power.
at this moment. Several observatories on Earth are built and
Most space-based radio telescope studies and initiatives
scheduled to be built, as for instance the LOw Frequency AR-
aim to place a swarm of satellites far away from the Earths
ray (LOFAR) [12] and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
radio interference. Deployment location options include a
LOFAR is now operational for several years now, and is get-
also at ASTRON, Dwingeloo, The Netherlands ting data at frequencies above 30 MHz. To observe below

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2016 Radio Frequency Interference (RFI)

these frequencies a space-based radio telescope needs to be distance to Earth, relative drift rates of the satellites inuenc-
built, due to the earlier described reasons: blocking and dis- ing both the maximum correlation integration times and the
turbance by the ionosphere and the strong RFI on Earth. rate at which the aperture plane is sampled. And of course the
Recent developments in space industry have motivated level of expected RFI is an important factor, both man-made
engineers and scientists to reconsider the idea of a low- and from celestial origins. Most of the astronomical signals of
frequency radio telescope in space. The evolution and on- interest are very week, often buried beneath the instantaneous
going miniaturisation of technology for example, have led to noise. This would allow coding of the pre-correlation signals
the emergence of new very small spacecraft (nano-satellites) with a limited number of bits, but only if the RFI levels would
capable of performing simple missions in space. Recent ad- be low.
vances in communications also bear a promise for increased
intersatellite communication bandwidth for relatively low
power conditions. Several space-based observations at low 3. EXPECTED RFI
frequency were done (by the Radio-Astronomy-Explorer-2
satellite in the seventies, and also by SELENE, Cassini, Wind To determine the amount of expected RFI on various loca-
STEREO), but are very limited in resolution and sensitivity tions, the rst step is to identify possible sources of RFI [18].
since it was a single antenna instrument [10]. The most obvious source of RFI in any location in space is
In the ESA DARIS (Distributed Antennas for Radio as- man-made interference on Earth. On Earth the spectrum is
tronomy In Space) project [16, 15] a study on the possibili- heavily in use for various communication applications. Be-
ties of conducting low-frequency observations with multiple sides that, the propagation properties of low frequencies are
small satellites was carried out. A scenario with eight slave such that the attenuation of the signals is very low and there-
spacecraft and a central spacecraft was proposed, in which the fore the RFI of man-made interference is high.
nodes will do the sensing part while the mothership will have The second form of expected RFI is lightning. It is well
additional processing and communication tasks. One of the known that terrestrial lightning generates radio signals. It was
conclusions of the study was that technology has reached a the research on lightning in transatlantic radio communication
level where this type of scenario is realistic and can be imple- that makes the discovery of radio astronomy in the rst place.
mented with COTS components. However, having a central This phenomenon is not restricted to Earth and many observa-
spacecraft will increase the risk of failure of the system. tions show that lightning appears also on other solar planets.
A sequel of DARIS, the OLFAR (Orbiting Low Fre- The Voyager 1 and 2 discovered radio emission of lightning
quency Antennas for Radio Astronomy) project, focused on a on Saturn and Uranus. Lightning of Jupiter will be difcult
radio telescope in space for the 0.3 30 MHz domain based to detect from Earth since the emission of a frequency around
on a completely distributed system without a central process- 20 MHz will be below the ionospheric cutoff frequency. But
ing node [6, 7, 2]. A swarm of 50 or more nano-satellites in space the signals of lightning of our solar planets will be
orbiting faraway from terrestrial RFI is to be used to sense detectable.
and sample the cosmic noise, process the information by In case a planet has a strong magnetic eld, there is a
means of distributed correlation, and send the processed data possibility that solar winds or the planets satellites interact
to a base station on Earth. That means that each member of with the magnetosphere. This generates intense radio waves
the swarm will have to full three main tasksradio observa- at low frequencies. The mechanism has been identied as the
tion, data distribution and processing, and downlinking. With cyclotron-maser instability, a non-thermal, coherent emission
current-day technologies, an instantaneous radio frequency mechanism. The radiation has a frequency of between 30 kHz
bandwidth of about 1 MHz would be feasible, and larger and 1 MHz and a total power of between about 1 million and
bandwidth capabilities are expected in the coming decade. 10 million watts. The radiation is absorbed by the ionosphere
The question arises, where to place a low frequency ra- and therefore can only be measured outside the Earth.
dio telescope in space. Several suggestion have already been The fourth effect of expected RFI is Quasi Thermal Noise
made, including: (QTN). QTN is radio noise induced by solar uv radiation im-
Lunar orbit (approx. 384.000 km from Earth) pinging on the antennas.
The last one is EMI of the own spacecraft. Although this
Earth leading/trailing orbits (approx. 5.000.000 km
can be minimised as much as possible in the design, some-
from Earth)
times small residuals of RFI remain. The good thing about
Sun-Earth L2 (approx. 1.500.000 km from Earth) this type of RFI is that it is to some extent predictable. Cali-
bration is possible, although this will impact the overall sen-
Earth-Moon L2 (approx. 60.000 km from the Moon,
sitivity. Mitigation approaches include using differential am-
makes approx. 444.000 km from Earth)
pliers; spatial ltering is also a possibility but that would
The location decision is depending on a number of pa- reduce the number of degrees of freedom in the signal pro-
rameters. For example downlink bandwidth depending on the cessing steps, and would not be optimal.

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2016 Radio Frequency Interference (RFI)

Interference produced at the surface of the Earth, arti- 4.2. RAE2 data
cial radio transmissions and lightning, are effectively blocked
by the Moon. This makes the far side of the Moon an inter- RAE-2 Lunar orbit data show that man-made RFI from Earth
esting place for a radio telescope for low frequencies. Be- is visible with powers of about 10 to 20 dB above the galactic
low 3 MHz, these signals are already attenuated a lot by the background, for frequencies between 250 kHz and 13.1 MHz
ionosphere of the Earth, and above 3 MHz the attenuation [9][1]. The frequency channel widths used are 20 kHz wide.
during ground wave propagation around the Moon is so high In [1] it is shown that at Earth day-night differences in emitted
that the surface produced RFI will not be observed behind the interference as seen from the RAE-2 lunar orbit ranges from
Moon. The Earth Auroral Kilometric Radiation (AKR, fre- about 40 dB at 40 kHz to about 20 dB at 4 MHz. The Earth
quencies 30kHz - 1MHz) is more troublesome because it is night time, having a more transparent ionosphere, is the more
not produced at the surface, but at an altitude of 1-3 times the noisy period. Using the same conversions as in the previous
radius of the Earth. This means that it does not have to prop- section, the predicted RFI levels based on the measurements
agate through the ionosphere to reach the Moon. These low of RAE-2 can be given for the various locations. This is pre-
frequencies are less attenuated by ground wave propagation. sented in able 1.
However, due to the very low conductivity of the Moon its
surface and the very rough terrain, the RFI produced by AKR 4.3. Waves RFI obervations
will still be much weaker than the Galactic Background Radio
Noise when there is no direct Line of Sight (LOS). However, Percentile plots of seven data sets from the Waves instrument
due to the high altitude of the AKR, there will be a smaller on the Wind space craft, more or less randomly chosen be-
area behind the Moon where there is no direct LOS to the tween 2002 and 2016, are plotted in Figure 1. Each data set
source, which reduces the amount of time where observations contains one minute time averages and sampled logarithmi-
can be executed during a Moon orbit. cally between 1.1 and 13.8 MHz. From each of these seven
datasets, the 0.99, 0.9 and 0.5 percentile spectra were com-
puted and plotted. The gure shows that the maximum in-
terference level is about 7 dB above the background. The
4. MEASURING RFI LEVELS Waves instrument is located in Earth L1. Extrapolated to lu-
nar orbit distances (about four times closed to Earth than Sun-
To be able to tell more about the levels of RFI on the various Earth L1) this would mean 10 log10 (42 ) = 12 dB more power,
locations, two possible options are possible: look at the obser- or about 19 dB above the background noise. As the L1 La-
vation of existing instruments and secondly use Earth based grangian point is at the day-side of Earth, the observed spectra
observations to extrapolate to the RFI situation in space. Ra- at the night-side of Earth would be about 20 dB higher, as is
dio Astronomy Explorer 1 and 2 and the Waves instrument of shown in [1]. This would mean that the maximum expected
the Wind spacecraft for example are known instruments. The man-made interference levels in the range 1-14 MHz would
data is available and can be used for interpretation. In the up- lie in the range 20 to 40 dB above the celestial background.
coming subsections measurements taken by several missions
will be briey described. 4.4. Terrestrial measurements

Coarse order of magnitude estimates of the expected RFI


levels at lunar orbit (Earth-Moon L2) can be given by extrap-
4.1. RAE1 data olating data observed on Earth. Figure 2 for example gives
spectra obtained near the village of Dronten in the Nether-
The Radio Astronomy Explorer 1 (RAE1) was launched on lands in 2006. The strongest signals below 30 MHz are about
July 4, 1968. The spacecraft of 190 kg was brought in an -100 dBWm2 Hz1 and the FM band at 100 MHz contains
Earth orbit at a 6000 kilometer altitude. Measurements were signals with strengths up to -120 to -110 dBWm2 Hz1 .
done at 9.18 MHz [9]. The RFI levels lie at least 44 dB Assuming the FM stations are at distances of roughly 30-40
above the galactic background noise. For Earth-Moon L2, km to Dronten, then the free-space attenuation difference
this would give a reduced power of 10 log10 (380/6)2 = between Dronten and lunar orbit (L2) is roughly 80 dB.
36dB, resulting to an expected RFI level of at least 8 dB This would then give a signal ux density of about -190
above the galactic background level in a moon orbit. For dBWm2 Hz1 , about 5 dB above the celestial background.
the Earth-Moon L2 an additional reduction of power of The FM band lies outside the range of interest, but it is inter-
10 log10 (444/380) = 1.3dB. The Earth leading or trailing esting to know what the expected ux is for linearity analysis
sun orbit of approximately 5 million kilometre gives an addi- purposes. If we further assume that the effective FM chan-
tional reduction (wrt the moon orbit) of 22.4 dB. In Table 1 nel transmitter bandwidth (in which the emitted power can
the results are summarised. thought to be concentrated) of 10 kHz, this would lead to

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2016 Radio Frequency Interference (RFI)

So there are many unknowns at this moment. What is the


RFI situation at this moment, what is the situation during the
day (day/night) and seasons, what is the impact of the ground
propagation on the Moon on the RFI levels on the far side of
the Moon.
Therefore it is important to continue measuring the RFI
levels with new missions. Measuring the RFI levels must be
done on a place far away from the Earths ionosphere. Once
the levels are known at a certain location, the levels on other
locations can be determined by extrapolation.

6. CONCLUSIONS

Recent technological advances indicate that a low-frequency


space-based radio interfometer is starting to get into reach.
This would mean that the last frequency regime for radio as-
tronomy could be opened-up in the next decade. RFI is an
Fig. 1. Sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian point radio percentile spec- issue for radio telescopes in space; man-made interference,
tra (f = 50 kHz, 1441 one-minute averages per day) com- AKR and solar burst will give signals which can be at least
puted using Waves on Wind instrument data [4](data obtained 40 dB above the galactic background noise levels. These lev-
via NSSDC/SPDF) els however are manageable, provided proper space qualied
techniques are developed to cope with these levels. To check
the levels, additional missions conducting RFI measurements
would be welcome, these could be single cubesat-like satel-
a spectral density at L2 of -150 dBWm2 for this channel
lites.
width at the Lunar L2 point.

7. REFERENCES
5. DISCUSSION
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