DVB-S Passive Radar Performance Evaluation in Semi-Urban Ground Scenario

Passive Radars (PRs) are promising emerging technologies to face new security requirements. Satellite illuminators are of great interest due to their nearby global coverage and availability, operating frequencies and waveforms. The main challenges are related to high transmission losses, which limit the coverage areas. A study of DVB-S capabilities as IoO is presented and first results of ground targets detection in a semi-urban scenario are presented. The employment of commercial parabolic antennas for acquiring both the reference and surveillance channel limits the angular coverage and therefore, the scenario of the PR. Results confirmed the feasibility of DVB-S PRs for low range ground target detection and tracking, and pointed out the effects of target echoes Doppler spreading along the signal processing chain, whose analysis is a key step towards the proposal of solutions to increase detection performance.