L-Band Pulse Phase Measurements of Pulsar B0329+54 Using a 1.8-m Dish Antenna

Pulsars are rotating neutron stars that emit stable periodic signals. In this work, pulsar pulse phase measurements were performed using a dish antenna with a diameter of 1.8m with the goal to characterize the repeatability of pulsar timing measurements using a small-aperture antenna. A low-cost data collection system using a software-defined radio was designed and implemented in support of this goal. The instrumentation was used to observe pulsar B0329+54 for a time span of just over 19 hours at an observation frequency of 1400 MHz. Nine independent phase measurements were performed with an integration time of 1 h each. A probabilistic method using an <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">M</i>-of-<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">N</i> search algorithm was used to conclude that the pulsar was successfully detected with a false detection probability of less than 1.4 × 10<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">−4</sup> and that 7 out of the 9 phase measurements were successful. The standard deviation of the successful measurements was 1.4 ms.