SETI - High sensitivity searches at NASA with high speed tape recorders
The paper reports the two observing programs conducted to compare two techniques which have been proposed as methods for performing the requisite Fourier transformations in very large multichannel spectrum analysers (MCSA): the direct digital FFT and optical transform processor. The details of the observations at NRAO utilizing a direct digital FFT are given. A description of the NAIC, Arecibo observations utilizing an optical processor at the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan (ERIM) and a microdensitometer at Electromagnetics System Laboratories (ESL) is presented. For both observing programs, statistical analysis of the power spectra produced by the nonreal-time MCSAs (or post-processing) was accomplished.