An Algorithm for Mitigating Transient RFI in Pulsar Observation

We propose an algorithm, referred to as the pulsar phase and standard deviation (PPSD), to mitigate transient radio frequency interference (RFI) in pulsar observations. PPSD uses the model for pulsar time of arrival to identify pulsar phase and extract the pulse profile to protect the original pulsar profile. PPSD sets a threshold based on the statistics empirical rule to label the transient RFI in the off-pulse data until all unlabelled off-pulse data obeys the white Gaussian noise (WGN) distribution. The transient RFI data is then substituted with WGN. Finally, we use PPSD to process the pulsar observation data obtained from the NanShan 25 m Radio Telescope. Our results show that PPSD can effectively mitigate the transient RFI and improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the pulsar observations.

Automated summary

The PPSD algorithm is proposed to mitigate transient radio frequency interference in pulsar observations by identifying pulsar phase and extracting pulse profile. It sets a threshold based on statistics to label transient RFI and substitute it with white Gaussian noise, resulting in improved signal-to-noise ratio of pulsar observations.