Dissertation: Algorithms for Detecting and Removing Radio Interference

My Dissertation: Algorithms for Detecting and Removing Radio Interference

I defended my thesis, "Algorithms for Radio Interference Detection and Removal", on 22 June 2026. The complete manuscript can be downloaded as a PDF.

Thesis Propositions

• LOFAR meets its ambitious aims: radio-astronomical observations made in populated areas can still achieve very high sensitivity.
• At present, continuous broadband transmitters such as DAB stations are the most damaging interference sources for low-frequency radio astronomy.
• SumThreshold detects interference more accurately than conventional thresholding, so it is recommended for data from any sensitive radio telescope (Chapter 2).
• Morphological detection — especially the scale-invariant rank operator — provides a fast and effective extra step for locating interference (Chapter 2).
• It is very likely that radio-frequency interference will not prevent LOFAR from detecting signals from the Epoch of Reionisation (Chapter 6).
• Though the low-pass filters introduced here are still at an early stage, they appear to be an efficient way to suppress unwanted relics in the final sky maps (Chapter 4).
• Interference sources that affect LOFAR are spread roughly evenly across the Earth's surface, and Hata's model describes their signal propagation well (Chapter 6).
• When selecting the best site for a low-frequency radio telescope, the average state of the ionosphere matters more than the RFI level.
• Astronomical research benefits from collaborating with computer science.
• Research is like ballroom dancing: standing and moving independently matters, but joining forces produces even better results.
• "By definition" is by definition not the same as "almost always", even though it is almost always used that way.

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