The purpose of this paper is to improve the detection sensitivity of radio interferometry. The development of wideband signal processing techniques is necessary for high-sensitivity radio interferometry. The higher-order sampling technique can achieve wider bandwidth than expensive wide-baseband conversion system. The over sampling technique can improve the quantization loss from 11.89% to 3.99% at the 4-level quantized sampling. Moreover, the digital filter can reduce the folding noise incurred by the non-rectangular frequency response at a sampling process. It is confirmed that the wideband and low-loss A/D conversion system may be realized by implementing the higher-order sampling, over sampling and digital filtering techniques. In this paper, the key features focusing on these advanced techniques for radio astronomy are presented in detail.

This paper proposes higher-order spread spectrum direct optical switching CDMA system and an aliasing canceler to remove the aliasing distortion caused by higher-order bandpass sampling. Theoretical analysis of the signal quality shows that the 3rd order bandpass sampling scheme can improve the carrier-to-interference-power ratio compared with the conventional 1st order bandpass sampling scheme, by 5 dB.

The VSOP terminal is a new data-acquisition system for the Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). This terminal was primarily designed for ground telescopes in the VLBI Space Observatory Programme (VSOP). New technologies; higher-order sampling and digital filtering techniques, were introduced in the development. A cassette cart was also introduced, which supports 24-hour unattended operations at the maximum data rate of 256 Mbps. The higher-order sampling and digital filtering techniques achieve flat and constant phase response over bandwidth of 32 MHz without using expensive wide base-band converters. The digital filtering technique also enables a variety of observing modes defined on the VSOP terminal, even with a fixed sampling frequency in an A/D converter. The new terminals are installed at Nobeyama, Kashima, Usuda, Mizusawa, and Kagoshima radio observatories in Japan, and are being used in VSOP and other domestic VLBI observations. In this paper the key features of the VSOP terminal focusing on these advanced technologies are presented, and the results of performance tests are shown.