Demonstration of a 16 Gbps Station-1 Broadband-RF VLBI System

ABSTRACT.A relatively inexpensive 16 Gbps data-recording system based on commercial off-the-shelf technology and open-source software has recently been developed. Combining this recorder with the parallel development of broadband Very Long Baseline Interferometer (VLBI) instrumentation is enabling dramatically improved sensitivity for both astronomical and geodetic VLBI. In this article, we describe the VLBI system and the results of a demonstration experiment that illustrates a number of cutting-edge technologies that can be deployed in the near future to significantly enhance the power of the VLBI technique.