A dual-polarization whitened-template trigger for real-time radio detection of extensive air showers

Abstract

Autonomous radio detection of extensive air showers requires reliable discrimination of their characteristic signals from transient interference, with decisions made in real time under stringent hardware constraints. We present a compact dual-polarization trigger developed using detector-folded air-shower simulations and measured radio backgrounds from the Auger Engineering Radio Array. The method combines the characteristic shape of air-shower pulses with measured background statistics to construct a filter that distinguishes air-shower signals from radio interference. On an independent validation dataset, it achieves 96% signal efficiency at a frame-equivalent background trigger rate of 3.12 kHz, substantially outperforming conventional amplitude thresholding and unwhitened template matching. Its robustness is further investigated using recordings acquired at different times from geographically distributed stations exposed to heterogeneous radio interference. Transferring the unchanged filter between these environments requires adjusting the trigger threshold to the recently measured background conditions to control the background trigger rate. With threshold updates every 1 ms, the achieved rates range from 35.2 to 41.4 kHz for a nominal target of 35.7 kHz, demonstrating effective rate control across the tested environments while maintaining sensitivity to air-shower signals. The compact trigger architecture meets the timing constraints of a field-programmable gate array at 200 MHz, supporting its feasibility for autonomous radio detection.

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BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@misc{dorosti2026dualpolarization,
  title = {{A dual-polarization whitened-template trigger for real-time radio detection of extensive air showers}},
  author = {Qader Dorosti and Alperen Aksoy and Ilja Bekman and Markus Cristinziani and Eric-Teunis de Boone and Vesselin Dimitrov and Chimezie Eguzo and Stefan Heidbrink and Stefan van Waasen and Andre Zambanini},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.19898},
  eprint = {2608.19898},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19898},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - A dual-polarization whitened-template trigger for real-time radio detection of extensive air showers
AU  - Qader Dorosti
AU  - Alperen Aksoy
AU  - Ilja Bekman
AU  - Markus Cristinziani
AU  - Eric-Teunis de Boone
AU  - Vesselin Dimitrov
AU  - Chimezie Eguzo
AU  - Stefan Heidbrink
AU  - Stefan van Waasen
AU  - Andre Zambanini
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/11/02
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.19898
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19898
AB  - Autonomous radio detection of extensive air showers requires reliable discrimination of their characteristic signals from transient interference, with decisions made in real time under stringent hardware constraints. We present a compact dual-polarization trigger developed using detector-folded air-shower simulations and measured radio backgrounds from the Auger Engineering Radio Array. The method combines the characteristic shape of air-shower pulses with measured background statistics to construct a filter that distinguishes air-shower signals from radio interference. On an independent validation dataset, it achieves 96% signal efficiency at a frame-equivalent background trigger rate of 3.12 kHz, substantially outperforming conventional amplitude thresholding and unwhitened template matching. Its robustness is further investigated using recordings acquired at different times from geographically distributed stations exposed to heterogeneous radio interference. Transferring the unchanged filter between these environments requires adjusting the trigger threshold to the recently measured background conditions to control the background trigger rate. With threshold updates every 1 ms, the achieved rates range from 35.2 to 41.4 kHz for a nominal target of 35.7 kHz, demonstrating effective rate control across the tested environments while maintaining sensitivity to air-shower signals. The compact trigger architecture meets the timing constraints of a field-programmable gate array at 200 MHz, supporting its feasibility for autonomous radio detection.
ER  -

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