Located at lat: -34° 51' 57".35; Long: 58° 08' 25".04; 29,9714m above sea level the I.A.R. has a permanent RFI monitor station in order to identify strong and harmful RFI for our radio astronomical equipment.

 

The monitor located 14mts above ground, has a spatial coverage of 360° in order to identify the direction of the strong RFI and frequency coverage from 2 GHz up to 9 GHz with a overall system gain of 75dB capable of detect signal down to -110dBm at the antenna terminals, for two antenna polarizations, vertical and horizontal.

 

As a receiver and acquisition unit a hewlett packard Spectrum Analyzer controlled by a desktop computer its being used.

 

All the data acquired it´s processed offline and automatically done under a linux O.S. computer.

 

As a remark both the rotator and the electronics of the RF section where designed and assembled in the IAR.

 

The RFI monitor station its basically used to help to identify strong RFI as locally generated like RF equipment, computers, cell phones or any other equipment at the IAR or externally generated like Radio Data links, or other spatially located source.

 

Also the equipment can help to characterize or measure a particular site by its geographical relocation, like was done for the SKA Argentine characterization Site Campaign in San Juan Argentina.

 

 

For daily data visit:

 

http://www.iar.unlp.edu.ar/~ggancio/rfi/rfi_stat.html

 

For daily reports or more information please contact:

 

Ing. Juan José LARRARTE --> juanjo -at- iar.unlp.edu.ar
or
Tec.Guillermo Gancio -->ggancio -at- iar.unlp.edu.ar

 

RFI Monitor history log
Apr - 2012: RFI Monitor Phase I Equipment Requirements
May - 2012: RFI Monitor Equipment Design & Construction
Jun - 2012: RFI Monitor First Light
Jun - 2012: RFI Monitor Measurement Campaign start
Sep - 2012: RFI BKG Monitor, Measurement Campaign start
Oct - 2012: RFI BKG Monitor, Measurement Campaign end
Nov - 2012: IAR RFI Monitor, major upgrade
Feb - 2014: IAR RFI Monitor, 1GHz - 18GHz, First measurements & calibration.
Mar - 2015: IAR RFI Monitor, 1GHz - 18GHz, Installation of the equipment on the control room.
Mar - 2015: IAR RFI Monitor, 1GHz - 18GHz, Beginning of RFI measurements.

 

IVS 2014 General Meeting Proceedings, Feb. 2014
"Development of an Electromagnetic Interferencie Monitor from 1 Ghz to 18 Ghz" 
Guillermo Gancio et al

 

Colloquium held at IAR, 26-05-2014
"Introducción a la Gestión del Espectro para Radioastronomía"   
Guillermo Gancio

 

IUCAF 4th School on Spectrum Management for Radio Astronomy, Joint ALMA Observatory, Santiago, Chile, del 7 al 13 de abril de 2014 

"Radio Frequency Interference: Equipment and Measurements"  
Guillermo Gancio

 

21^st EVGA Meeting, Espoo - Finland, March 5-8, 2013
"Radio Frequency Interference Observations at IAR La Plata"   
H. Hase  

 

EVGA 2013 Proceedings, Page 49, 2013
"Radio Frequency Interference Observations at IAR La Plata"  
H. Hase, G. Gancio, D. Perilli, J. J. Larrarte, L. Guarrera, L. Garcia, G. Kronschnabl, C. Plotz

 

Information session presented at the IAR (12/12/2012)
"Radio Frequency Interference TIGO - IAR Measurement Campaign"  

 

 

 

Spanish version: