A DIGITAL SPECTRAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUE AND ITS APPLICATION TO RADIO ASTRONOMY,

Abstract

An efficient, digital technique for the measure ment of the autocorrelation function and power spectrum of Gaussian random signals is described. As is well known, the power spectrum of a signal can be obtained by a Fourier transformation of its autocorrelation function. This report presents an indirect method of computing the autocorrelation function of a signal having Gaussian statistics which greatly reduces the amount of digital processing that is required. A review of the measurement of power spectra through the autocorrelation function method is given. The one-bit technique of computing the autocorrelation function is presented; in partic ular, the mean and variance of the resulting spectral estimate have been investigated. These results are then applied to the problem of the measurement of spectral lines in radio astronomy. A complete radio-astronomy system is described. (Author)

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 30, 1963
Accession Number
AD0418413

Entities

People

  • Sander Weinreb

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Astronomy
  • Autocorrelation
  • Data Science
  • Fourier Transformation
  • Information Science
  • Measurement
  • Power Spectra
  • Radio Astronomy
  • Spectra
  • Spectral Lines
  • Statistics

Readers

  • Approximation Theory.
  • Astronomy and Astrophysics.