Noise Suppression and Radio Frequency Interference Rejection for Self-Triggered Radio Detectors of Extensive Air Showers
Self-triggered radio detection of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays and neutrinos offers a scalable and cost-effective approach for next-generation astroparticle observatories, but remains challenging under realistic radio-frequency interference (RFI) conditions. In the classical air-shower radio band, the achievable sensitivity and trigger reliability are critically limited by the balance between external sky background noise and internal detector-unit noise, as well as by non-stationary anthropogenic interference. In this work, we present an end-to-end design and experimental characterization of a self-triggered radio detector unit explicitly optimized to operate in a galactic-noise-dominated regime. Rather than focusing on a single hardware component or trigger algorithm, we adopt a system-level methodology that coherently integrates sky-noise modeling, RF-chain noise budgeting, electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) mitigation, and measurement-driven validation. By using the galactic radio background as a quantitative reference, we assess the internal noise performance of the detector unit and demonstrate conditions under which extensive air shower (EAS) radio signals can be distinguished from anthropogenic interference at the system-response level. We further introduce an indirect noise-quantification method to estimate the low-noise amplifier contribution within the complete RF chain based on differential internal-noise measurements evaluated at the ADC level. The proposed detector unit is validated through laboratory and on-site measurements, demonstrating operation close to the galactic-noise limit in the core frequency band. These results provide a practical and transferable methodology for the design and deployment of large-scale self-triggered radio arrays such as GRAND.