Number Of Channels To Search

9010-023

This diagram compares the optical haystack to its microwave counterpart.  For optical heterodyne receivers searching for cw beacons, it is thought that the optimum bin bandwidth would be about 100 kHz.  Thus, there are about 9 billion so-called channels to search in the optical spectrum and a similar number in the microwave spectrum, where bins of 1 Hz bandwidth (or less) are assumed.

Copyright (c), 1990, The COSETI Observatory