Artificial pulse generator triggers LOFAR radio telescope

LOFAR is a radio synthesis telescope existing of at least 37 stations in The Netherlands and 8 European stations. One of the operation modes of the telescope is to detect and trigger on short (nS) electro-magnetic pulses. These pulses originate from ultra-high energy cosmic rays but also from earth based sources like motor sparking, lightning or electric fences. Strong cosmic ray signals are rare and come from any direction in the sky. A cheap artificial pulse generator is developed to trigger the LOFAR radio telescope. This simplifies testing of the self trigger algorithms and is also useful for system testing and validation.