Investigation and First Experiment of BeiDou-Based Passive Radar Vessel Target Imaging

The passive radar system using global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) as opportunistic illuminator shows its potential in maritime surveillance application owing to its global coverage. However, the main drawback of GNSS-based passive radar stays in the extremely low signal power density near the Earth’s surface, which makes the detection and imaging of target in surveillance sea area a challenging task. In this paper, an overview of the signal processing algorithms for GNSS-based passive radar target detection and imaging is provided. Then, a maritime experiment with BeiDou satellites as transmitters and a vessel as the target was carried out, which is the world’s first BeiDou-based passive radar vessel target detection and imaging experiment. The results confirm the feasibility of GNSS-based passive radar in vessel target detection and imaging.