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The Murchison Widefield Array: The Square Kilometre Array Precursor at Low Radio Frequencies

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2013
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Journal Article

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Tingay, S.J. and Goeke, R. and Bowman, J.D. and Emrich, D. and Ord, S.M. and Mitchell, D.A. and Morales, M.F. and Booler, T. and Crosse, B. and Wayth, R. B. and Lonsdale, C.J. and Tremblay, S. and Pallot, D. and Colegate, T. and Wicenec, A. and Kudryavtseva, N. and Arcus, W. and Barnes, D. and Bernardi, G. and Briggs, F. and Burns, S. and Bunton, J. and Cappallo, R. and Corey, B. and Deshpande, A. and Desouza, L. and Gaensler, B. and Greenhill, L. and Hall, P.J. and Hazelton, B. and Herne, D. and Hewitt, J. and Johnston-Hollitt, M. and Kaplan, D. and Kasper, J. and Kincaid, B. and Koenig, R. and Kratzenberg, E. and Lynch, M. and McKinley, B. and McWhirter, S. and Morgan, E. and Oberoi, D. and Pathikulangara, J. and Prabu, T. and Remillard, R. and Rogers, A. and Roshi, A. and Salah, J. and Sault, R. and Udaya-Shankar, N. and Schlagenhaufer, F. and Srivani, K. and Stevens, J. and Subrahmanyan, R. and Waterson, M. and Webster, R. and Whitney, A. and Williams, A. and Williams, C. and Wyithe, J. 2013. The Murchison Widefield Array: The Square Kilometre Array Precursor at Low Radio Frequencies. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia. 30: pp. e007.
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Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
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Copyright © 2013 Astronomical Society of Australia

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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.