Arcetri Technical Reports 1/2013

SKA Project Series
Effects of the bandpass slope on the SKA Low quantization spectrometer

G. Comoretto

INAF Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri

Abstract

The SKA-LOW array observes a region of the radio spectrum where the astronomical signal spectral density varies by about two orders of magnitude. We study the effects of ADC quantization on a noise-like signal with a very steep spectrum, both analytically and by simulations. The only effect observed is the introduction on a additive quantization noise, with a spectrum well described by a flat Gaussian noise uncorrelated with the digitized signal. The total power in this noise corresponds to 1/12 of the squared quantization step, that is usually negligible even in the spectral regions where the input power density is lower. 

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