RFI profiles of prime candidate sites for the first radio astronomical telescope in Malaysia

Radio astronomy is a very young research field in South East Asia. There has not been a research-grade radio telescope built in this part of the world yet. A plan has been proposed by the University of Malaya’s Radio Cosmology Research Laboratory to build a medium-sized radio telescope in order to eventually join the global projects of the Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) Network and Square Kilometer Array (SKA). Main parameters taken into consideration in finding the main prime candidate sites involves features that produce Radio Frequency Interference (RFI). These features are mainly telecommunication and satellite navigation signals and population density. Other important features considered are rainfall level, land contour and availability for future collaboration with institutions at the chosen sites. In this paper we described the experimental procedure and the RFI measurement on our five prime candidate’s sites in Malaysia, covering frequency band from 1 MHz to 2000 MHz. The levels and sources of RFI on these sites were monitored and analyzed. The RFI level in Langkawi   showed the lowest average of -100.33dBm(4.4×106Jy). These RFI have been found to fluctuate relatively lowly (between 1 dB m and 2 dB m). This site is also ideally located close to the Langkawi National Observatory and we recommend that this site as the best site to build the first research-grade radio telescope in this region.