Statistical radio astronomy of the 21st century

The exponential development of radio-astronomy methods (sensitivity, resolution, depth of surveys, etc) has led to the need for new methods aimed at distinguishing weak signals in the midst of numerous background signals, as has long been the case for radio astronomy at meter wavelengths. Centimeter-wavelength data accumulated with existing radio telescopes (such as the RATAN-600 reflector—the largest radio telescope in Russia) are presented, and expected problems for major new radio telescopes of the 21st century, such as the Square Kilometer Array, are discussed. The effectiveness of using certain tested methods to derive astrophysically important results through reasonable statistical processing of large datasets is shown. In experiments conducted with RATAN-600, these methods lead to an enhancement in sensitivity by an order of magnitude compared with the sensitivity of a resolving element.