The RADIOBLOCKS project is a collaborative effort aimed at enhancing Europe's standing in radio astronomy research by uniting leading institutes responsible for Europe's top research infrastructures in radio astronomy, alongside partners from industry and academia. The project's goal is to develop innovative building blocks beyond the state of the art, designed to address shared challenges identified by research infrastructures within radio astronomy. By enabling a diverse range of new scientific discoveries, these solutions will foster collaboration and strengthen European scientific competitiveness across the field.
RADIOBLOCKS involves 33 partners and is divided into 5 work packages, carrying out carefully targeted development work and addressing common aspects throughout the entire data chain.
One of the main objectives of the project is to develop new components essential for sensitive, wideband receivers used in European research infrastructures. Additionally, the project focuses on developing digital receivers that will improve crucial technology areas such as system temperature, bandwidth, and field-of-view. Another key focus is on data transport and correlation, to provide efficient signal processing tools. Commercially available technology will be used to this end. Furthermore, the project aspires to offer a modular and open-source data processing toolkit, enabling swift, reproducible, and scalable analysis of large-volume data products.
Addressing challenges such as sensitivity, power usage, and the mitigation of radio frequency interference are among the project’s primary goals. So is the creation of a European technology toolbox that astronomers can use across various instruments—from single-dish telescopes to global dish arrays—to achieve groundbreaking scientific discoveries.
