Broadband Interference
From Unofficial BOINC Wiki
[edit] General
Broadband Signals are those signals that cover a wide frequency range and are most likely to have been generated on the Earth. However, these Broadband Signals can be very high in amplitude, but even low amplitude Broadband Signals can be detected by the SETI@Home Project. We do not believe that these are types of signals that extraterrestrial beings would send. To cover a broad range of frequencies with the necessary power would be unnecessarily wasteful of their energy resources.
The broader the range of frequencies, the less energy you can put into a signal-frequency that sticks up out of the noise enabling detection. Some times, earthbound equipment doing its normal day-to-day activities creates what we consider to be an interference signal that we don't want and cannot (of course) use.
Typical interference producing equipment includes things like radar transmitters, aircraft transponders, defective equipment, and of course evil demons. Click the thumbnail to see an example of one of these. In this case a powerful radar signal completely swamped the antenna and detector system. This signal is obviously not what we are looking for either. We want a phone call from E.T.'s parents, not the local neighborhood radar transmitter.
