Queen's Solar Radio Telescope

Starting with the designs of earlier solar radio telescopes, particularly the one at Bell Labs, Murray Hill, we have built a new instrument. The major differences between this telescope and its predecessors are that it has: 1) parallel low and high gain channels for both polarizations; 2) four additional channels for active interference cancellation; and 3) all eight IF strips terminating in 100 MHz, 14--bit analog--to--digital converters with synchronized sampling. The advantages of such a configuration are: a) The parallel low and high gain channels allow a higher dynamic range without saturating than a single channel. b) Estimating bispectra between the channels gives a sensitive test for saturation in the higher gain channel. c) In the usual case, when both channels are in their linear region, one can use them with a noise injection diode to track the amplifier noise figures. d) With the noise diode off, the two channels can be used in a mode similar to remote reference. As the telescope is operating in a small city we anticipate that more than 90% of the measurements will be contaminated by various communications signals and impulsive noise. Thus all the signal processing will build on various robust statistical procedures that have proven effective in other applications. The best mode of operating the four active interference cancelling channels is still under study