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 wide-field, wide-band 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 6 month deployment confirmed the predicted sensitivity of the antennas, sky-noise-dominated systemtemperatures,andphase-coherentinterferometricmeasurements.Theradiospectrumisremarkablyfreeofstrong terrestrial signals, with the exception of two narrow frequency bands allocated to satellite downlinks, and rare bursts duetoground-based transmissionsbeingscatteredfrom aircraft andmeteortrails. Resultsindicatethepotential ofthe MWA LFD to make significant achievements in its three key science objectives: epoch of reionization science, heliospheric science, and radio transient detection.