A Short-Time Stationarity Test of Radio Signals From the Vela Pulsar Using Polyspectra

Abstract

Polyphase filterbank data of the Vela pulsar is acquired using the MeerKAT radio telescope and analysed using the second-order frequency-frequency polyspectrum. The lack of components off of the non-stationary manifold indicates that the process is second-order stationary over timescales of 0.8 microseconds. Additionally, the complex process is found to be circular and thus requires only a small subset of the possible definitions of the higher-order moments in its characterisation.