![Conservative CW mitigation demonstrated on a fully synthetic wideband radio dataset with realistic detector features. (a) Frequency spectrum before and after mitigation. Red shaded regions indicate the three cataloged anthropogenic CW tones at 137, 405, and 450 MHz (representing satellite downlinks, weather balloon telemetry, and South Pole station communications, respectively). These tones are removed via least-squares time-domain sine subtraction as described in the text. The orange dotted line marks an uncataloged narrowband feature at 285 MHz that is successfully preserved. (b) Time domain trace of the same waveform shown in panel (a), zoomed in to show the effect of mitigation around an injected nanosecond-scale broadband transient (dashed black line). The raw simulated trace before mitigation (light red line) is heavily obscured by CW interference. After subtraction of the cataloged tones, the mitigated trace (solid green line) shows significantly reduced coherent CW contamination, successfully recovering the underlying broadband impulsive signal and preserving both its original shape and temporal structure. -- [astro-ph.IM]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Methodological-Synergies.png?fit=1200%2C676&ssl=1)
[astro-ph.IM] Radio technosignature searches and radio-based ultra-high energy (UHE) neutrino experiments address different scientific questions, but share a closely related data analysis problem: identifying rare signals of unknown morphology within large datasets dominated by thermal noise and anthropogenic radio-frequency interference (RFI).
UHE neutrino radio experiments (including ARA, RNO-G, ANITA, and PUEO) have developed advanced methodologies for continuous-wave (CW) mitigation and background characterization. This invited contribution makes that connection concrete through three points.
First, we demonstrate that catalog-based time-domain sine subtraction — the CW mitigation technique used in ANITA and ARA — can be adapted for technosignature pipelines by restricting subtraction to documented persistent contaminants, improving broadband transient visibility while preserving uncataloged narrowband candidates.
Second, we identify a structural equivalence between spatiotemporal clustering used in UHE neutrino experiments and direction/cadence-based RFI rejection in radio SETI, proposing a joint feature space incorporating direction, time, frequency, bandwidth, duration, and polarization.
Third, we argue that background-only anomaly ranking is the natural second stage of this workflow, providing morphology-agnostic candidate triage. Together, these ideas motivate a ‘preserve-then-rank’ workflow for commensal rare-event discovery, opening a near-term path toward cross-community collaboration.
Paramita Dasgupta
Comments: 8 pages, 1 figure. Invited contribution to the Proceedings of IAU Symposium No. 404: “Advancing the Search for Technosignatures”, in press
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE); Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability (physics.data-an)
Cite as: arXiv:2605.19482 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2605.19482v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.19482
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Submission history
From: Paramita Dasgupta
[v1] Tue, 19 May 2026 07:34:21 UTC (76 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.19482
Astrobiology, SETI,
