Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

The equipment in this proposal is necessary to improve the frequency and time accuracy  of the new solar radio telescope that we have built at Queen's with the support of CFI, OIT, Sun Microsystems, and Lucent. This telescope is the only one of its kind in the world and was built to study solar modes (stable oscillations) and their interaction with the terrestrial environment. Innovative features such as simultaneous 8-channel sampling, simultaneous noise and signal observation, and high and low gain channels, make it uniquely suited to observe the transition of low to high power output of the sun. We have built a unique modular receiver that is upgradable and serviceable by students and can be used for projects by 4th year Engineering students.     A major application is the study of dropped calls (cellular phone calls that are terminated unexpectedly for technical reasons).  A great amount of money and time are invested by wireless network providers to improve network quality of service, and dropped calls is one of the most important customer perceived problems that affect this quality.  The point is that a link has been clearly shown between dropped calls and solar activity. Understanding the correlation between these has broad implications for cell phone service providers and customers, and has the potential to affect the design of future wireless systems and the creation of a cell phone that is designed to overcome solar radio interference.  We have been promised data from both Roger's and Cingular's cellular networks to aid in this study.  Finding a solution to this problem will clearly benefit Canada's telecommunications industry.       In our search for the mechanism that causes a large fraction of the dropped call rate in cellular phone systems to be coherent with the solar modes we will need to observe inside the cellular bands and will need to replace the current YIG oscillator with a precision synthesizer to have sufficient frequency accuracy. We also need to add GPS timing to facilitate coordinated observations with those from the Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ, telescope, as originally planned.