[touisteur]

Every sensor in the array is sampling at frequency, so - first order - you can use that sampling frequency and the sample size, you get an idea of the input bandwidth in bytes/second. There are of course bandwidth reduction steps (filtering, downsampling, beamforming)...

[Etheryte]

This makes no sense though? Given the Nyquist theorem, simply increasing sampling frequency past a certain step doesn't change the outcome.

[touisteur]

Sorry, not sure I follow from what I said (explaining how much data sensors produce) to 'increasing the sampling frequency' ? You're usually sampling at larger width to then put specifically taylored pass-band filter and removing aliasing effects and then downsampling. This is a classic signal acquisition pattern : https://dsp.stackexchange.com/questions/63359/obtain-i-q-com...

[labcomputer]

Actually, it does. You can decimate the higher sample rate to increase dynamic range and S/N ratio.

Also, for direct down conversion, you can get better mirror frequency rejection by oversampling and filtering in software.

[jacquesm]

Aren't they sampling broadband for later processing?

[touisteur]

On SKA from what I understand they're sampling broadband but quickly beamform and downsample as the datarates would be unsustainable to store over the whole array.