4 research outputs found
Field Deployment of Prototype Antenna Tiles for the Mileura Widefield Array--Low Frequency Demonstrator
Experiments were performed with prototype antenna tiles for the Mileura
Widefield Array--Low Frequency Demonstrator (MWA-LFD) to better understand the
widefield, wideband properties of their design and to characterize the radio
frequency interference (RFI) between 80 and 300 MHz at the site in Western
Australia. Observations acquired during the six month deployment confirmed the
predicted sensitivity of the antennas, sky-noise dominated system temperatures,
and phase-coherent interferometric measurements. The radio spectrum is
remarkably free of strong terrestrial signals, with the exception of two narrow
frequency bands allocated to satellite downlinks and rare bursts due to
ground-based transmissions being scattered from aircraft and meteor trails.
Results indicate the potential of the MWA-LFD to make significant achievements
in its three key science objectives: epoch of reionziation science,
heliospheric science, and radio transient detection.Comment: Accepted by AJ. 17 pages with figure