Intelligent Cognitive Radio Models for Enhancing Future Radio Astronomy Observations

Abstract

Radio astronomy organisations desire to optimise the terrestrial radio astronomy observations by mitigating against interference and enhancing angular resolution. Ground telescopes (GTs) experience interference from intersatellite links (ISLs). Astronomy source radio signals received by GTs are analysed at the high performance computing (HPC) infrastructure. Furthermore, observation limitation conditions prevent GTs from conducting radio astronomy observations all the time, thereby causing low HPC utilisation. This paper proposes mechanisms that protect GTs from ISL interference without permanent prevention of ISL data transmission and enhance angular resolution. The ISL transmits data by taking advantage of similarities in the sequence of observed astronomy sources to increase ISL connection duration. In addition, the paper proposes a mechanism that enhances angular resolution by using reconfigurable earth stations. Furthermore, the paper presents the opportunistic computing scheme (OCS) to enhance HPC utilisation. OCS enables the underutilised HPC to be used to train learning algorithms of a cognitive base station. The performances of the three mechanisms are evaluated. Simulations show that the proposed mechanisms protect GTs from ISL interference, enhance angular resolution, and improve HPC utilisation.