CYBERSKA

 A Cyberinfrastructure platform to meet the needs of data intensive radio astronomy on route to the SKA

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  • The Murchison Widefield Array: the Square Kilometre Array Precursor at low radio frequencies

The Murchison Widefield Array: the Square Kilometre Array Precursor at low radio frequencies

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By Samuel George 3920 days ago
http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6945
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.