In-field calibration of passive array receiver using detected target

This paper presents results of in-field calibration of a passive radar array receiver using measured data of a high signal-to-noise ratio target. The target was an airplane equipped with a GPS receiver to obtain air truth position data. This method is advantageous since it provides multiple measurements of the scattered signal originating from the airplane at different positions which improves the calibration. A number of methods were applied, both to the calibration dataset and a separate test dataset to compare their performances. It is demonstrated that array calibration can be performed using a strong SNR target such that the bearing to a second target can be estimated with a bias less than 0.1° and a standard deviation of approximately 0.6°. Based on the results, the proposed method of taking the average value of computed calibration correction vectors is recommended for its simplicity, as well as a lack of bias and good accuracy.