Autocorrelation-based detection methods for astrophysical and interstellar communication signals

Paper number

IAC-19,A4,1,11,x51622

Author

Mr. Matteo Trudu, Italy, INAF

Coauthor

Dr. Maura Pilia, Italy, INAF - Istituto Nazionale di AstroFisica

Coauthor

Dr. Gregory Hellbourg, United States, University of California

Coauthor

Dr. Pierpaolo Pari, Italy, INAF

Coauthor

Dr. Nicolò Antonietti, Italy

Coauthor

Dr. Claudio Maccone, Italy, International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) and Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF)

Coauthor

Dr. Andrea Melis, Italy, INAF - Istituto Nazionale di AstroFisica

Coauthor

Dr. Delphine Perrodin, Italy, INAF

Coauthor

Mr. Alessio Trois, Italy, INAF - Istituto Nazionale di AstroFisica

Year

2019

Abstract

The detection and reconstruction of potentially weak Signals-Of-Interest (SOI) in presence of noise is an important challenge in interstellar communication and astrophysics. The standard signal detection methods are based on energy or statistical variations in the time and frequency domains. The exploitation of the signal autocorrelation function, despite its higher computational complexity, is an interesting alternative to recover weak signals.

The Karhunen-Loeve Transform (KLT), for instance, statistically decomposes the signal into its main \textit{auto-correlated} components, and allows their optimum extraction. As such, the KLT is an ideal operator for performing blind adaptive filtering. For that reason, the KLT has triggered an increasing interest in the astronomical community, although no applicability, nor detection and extraction performance analyses have yet been published in the astronomical context.

We propose a new KLT method based on a  variant of the autocorrelation matrix. We first studied the reconstruction performance of the method via Monte Carlo simulations for different types of SOI. Secondly, a detection performance analysis of the method has been done, and we have compared the proposed approach with standard detection techniques. 

The results of these analyses, as well as the demonstration of the methods on real astronomical data, will be reported in this talk.

Abstract document

IAC-19,A4,1,11,x51622.brief.pdf

Manuscript document

(absent)