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

TL;DR

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is a low-frequency radio telescope in Australia, serving as a precursor to the Square Kilometre Array, with advanced real-time imaging and calibration capabilities for astronomical research.

Contribution

This paper details the design, system components, expected performance, and science objectives of the MWA, a novel low-frequency radio telescope array.

Findings

Operates at 80-300 MHz with 30.72 MHz bandwidth

Consists of 128 tiles over a 3 km area

Features hybrid hardware/software correlation and real-time calibration

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.