The murchison widefield array

Tingay, S. J.; Goeke, R.; Bowman, J. D.; Emrich, D.; Ord, S. M.; Mitchell, D. A.; Morales, M. F.; Booler, T.; Crosse, B.; Wayth, R. B.; Lonsdale, C. J.; Tremblay, S.; Pallot, D.; Colegate, T.; Wicenec, A.; Kudryavtseva, N.; Arcus, W.; Barnes, D.; Bernardi, G.; Briggs, F.; Burns, S.; Bunton, J. D.; Cappallo, R. J.; Corey, B. E.; Deshpande, A.; Desouza, L.; Gaensler, B. M.; Greenhill, L. J.; Hall, P. J.; Hazelton, B. J.; Herne, D.; Hewitt, J. N.; Johnston-Hollitt, M.; Kaplan, D. L.; Kasper, J. C.; Kincaid, B. B.; Koenig, R.; Kratzenberg, E.; Lynch, M. J.; McKinley, B.; McWhirter, S. R.; Morgan, E.; Oberoi, D.; Pathikulangara, J.; Prabu, T.; Remillard, R. A.; Rogers, A. E.E.; Roshi, A.; Salah, J. E.; Sault, R. J.; Udaya-Shankar, N.; Schlagenhaufer, F.; Srivani, K. S.; Stevens, J.; Subrahmanyan, R.; Waterson, M.; Webster, R. L.; Whitney, A. R.; Williams, A.; Williams, C. L.; Wyithe, J. S.B.

The murchison widefield array

Date

2013

Authors

Abstract

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.