Robust estimation of interplanetary scintillation

Abstract

Interplanetary scintillation (IPS) is a random process, so measurements of its power are affected by self-noise. The noise process is therefore nonstationary whenever the mean IPS power changes, such as when performing drift scans across a radio source. An estimator for IPS is presented which takes proper account of the noise statistics and performs significantly better than a simple 'matched' filter. The probabilistic basis of this estimator also makes it a powerful discriminator against interference, capable of delivering good estimates of scintillating power even when many of the data are badly corrupted.