BWRC Publications

Citation
David Messerschmitt. "Broadband Interstellar Radio Beacons". University of California, Berkeley, October, 9, 2009.

Abstract
Interstellar radio beacons (radio signals designed to attract the attention of another civilization) need good detection sensitivity, strong embedded statistical evidence of technological origin, robustness to interference at the receiver, consistency with stellar scanning strategies at both transmitter and receiver, immunity to interstellar propagation impairments, and embedded information content, all without explicit transmitter-receiver coordination. Lessons learned about interference-dominated wireless communication are informative, and lead us to favor pseudo-noise-like beacon signals that superficially resemble broadband white Gaussian noise and are based on deterministic mathematical algorithms that are presumably universally appreciated. In several important ways this conclusion is diametrically opposed to assumptions in past and current efforts in the radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). In the interest of limiting the range of signals that must be searched, understanding impairments in interstellar propagation and the goals of stellar scanning strategies are fruitful. In this talk, we outline the line of reasoning that leads to these conclusions, and discuss some of the strategies and resultant challenges in receiver search and acquisition. This research is being conducted in cooperation with the SETI Institute of Mountain View, California, and is supported in part by a grant from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Electronic downloads

• Talk-broadband-beacon-Oct-09.pdf · application/pdf · 1327 kbytes

Citation formats

• HTML

  David Messerschmitt. <a
  href="http://infopad.eecs.berkeley.edu/php/pubs/pubs.php/1146.html"><i>Broadband
  Interstellar Radio Beacons</i></a>, University
  of California, Berkeley, October, 9, 2009.

• Plain text

  David Messerschmitt. "Broadband Interstellar Radio Beacons".
  University of California, Berkeley, October, 9, 2009.

• BibTeX

  @seminar{Messerschmitt2009,
      author = {David Messerschmitt},
      title = {Broadband Interstellar Radio Beacons},
      organization = {University of California, Berkeley},
      month = {October},
      day = {9},
      year = {2009},
      URL = {http:///php/pubs/pubs.php/1146.html}
  }
  

Posted by Olivia Nolan on Oct 21, 2009..

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