The Murchison Widefield Array: The Square Kilometre Array Precursor at Low Radio Frequencies
The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is one of three Square Kilometre Array Precursor telescopes and is located at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in the Murchison Shire of the mid-west of Western Australia, a location chosen for its extremely low levels of radio frequency interference. The...
Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Other Authors: | , |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
CSIRO Publishing,
2014-07-22T14:13:51Z.
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | Get fulltext |
Summary: | The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is one of three Square Kilometre Array Precursor telescopes and is located at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in the Murchison Shire of the mid-west of Western Australia, a location chosen for its extremely low levels of radio frequency interference. The MWA operates at low radio frequencies, 80-300 MHz, with a processed bandwidth of 30.72 MHz for both linear polarisations, and consists of 128 aperture arrays (known as tiles) distributed over a ~3-km diameter area. Novel hybrid hardware/software correlation and a real-time imaging and calibration systems comprise the MWA signal processing backend. In this paper, the as-built MWA is described both at a system and sub-system level, the expected performance of the array is presented, and the science goals of the instrument are summarised. National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant AST CAREER-0847753) National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant AST-0457585) National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant AST-0908884) National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant PHY-0835713) United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant FA9550-0510247) Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory MIT School of Science |
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