Journal article
A new layout optimization technique for interferometric arrays, applied to the Murchison Widefield Array
AP Beardsley, BJ Hazelton, MF Morales, RJ Capallo, R Goeke, D Emrich, CJ Lonsdale, W Arcus, D Barnes, G Bernardi, JD Bowman, JD Bunton, BE Corey, A Deshpande, L deSouza, BM Gaensler, LJ Greenhill, D Herne, JN Hewitt, DL Kaplan Show all
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | Published : 2012
Abstract
Antenna layout is an important design consideration for radio interferometers because it determines the quality of the snapshot point spread function (PSF, or array beam). This is particularly true for experiments targeting the 21-cm Epoch of Reionization signal as the quality of the foreground subtraction depends directly on the spatial dynamic range and thus the smoothness of the baseline distribution. Nearly all sites have constraints on where antennas can be placed - even at the remote Australian location of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) there are rock outcrops, flood zones, heritages areas, emergency runways and trees. These exclusion areas can introduce spatial structure into the..
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Grants
Awarded by National Science Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
Support came from the U.S. National Science Foundation (grants AST CAREER-0847753, AST-0457585, AST-0908884 and PHY-0835713), the Australian Research Council (grants LE0775621 and LE0882938), the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (grant FA9550-0510247), the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the MIT School of Science, the Raman Research Institute, the Australian National University, the iVEC Petabyte Data Store, the Initiative in Innovative Computing and NVIDIA sponsored Center for Excellence at Harvard, and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, a Joint Venture of Curtin University of Technology and The University of Western Australia, funded by the Western Australian State government.