Multi Tx and Multi Rx Passive Radar Demonstrator with Limited Number of Receiving Channels

The paper describes a signal preprocessing approach intended for a multistatic, multiband passive radar system. Each transmitter broadcasts signals in different but closely spaced spectral channels, whereas each receiver has only two physical channels covering whole spectrum span of interest. In such scenario, the reference signal for particular spectral channel can be taken from the most advantageous receiver physical channel and used offline to perform range-Doppler processing of signals captured in other channels. To allow that, processing steps such as signal channelization and multisite synchronization have been proposed. The paper includes results of airplane detection, localisation and tracking obtained for real measurement data based on DVB-T illuminators.

I. Introduction

Passive radars have made significant advancements and are now considered a mature technology for the task of air surveillance. These radars have the unique capability of detecting and tracking targets without emitting any signals of their own, making them highly attractive for various civil and military applications [1]–[4]. The most basic tasks are target detection, tracking and localisation. However, if the system parameters and configuration allow, also ISAR (Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar) passive imaging is possible [5].