Improved 2D Ground Target Tracking in GPS-Based Passive Radar Scenarios

Abstract

Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites offer promising opportunity for Passive Radar systems due to their global coverage and the availability of multiple satellites throughout the world. However, their low power at ground level limits system coverage. In this paper, a GPS based Passive Radar which exploits a single illumination source, and uses digital array processing for ground targets localization is presented. To face signal power problems, a processing scheme combining reconstructed reference signals, adaptive filtering techniques and spatial filtering is implemented. Conventional beamforming techniques are used to increase the level of the target echo before the detection stage, and high resolution DoA estimation techniques are applied to estimate targets azimuth. Ground target localization in local Cartesian space is performed taking into account the system geometry, range and azimuth information. Both synthetic and real radar data are used to analyse system operation. During the measurement campaign, a cooperative vehicle was used for validation purposes. Results confirm that ground targets detection and localization are feasible using a single GPS transmitter.

Realistic Channel and Delay Coefficient Generation for Dual Mobile Space-Ground Links: A Tutorial

“…In the calculation of the Doppler spectrum for the satellites, a Doppler analysis window size of 1 second is chosen to optimize frequency resolution. Following the typical parameter selection for GPS L1 C/A code, a channel bandwidth of 2 MHz is considered [36], [37]. To render a considerably good performance, a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) point of 1024 is adopted.…”

Capabilities and challenges of passive radar systems based on broadband low‐Earth orbit communication satellites

“…Considering the sequence of associated target measurements along the satellite pass, or measurements from different illuminating satellites (i.e. multistatic approach), target localisation and tracking in Cartesian coordinates can be achieved by means of particle filtering or extended Kalman filter [20]. Besides, when multiple satellites, for example, from different constellations, are simultaneously illuminating the area but only one receiving reference channel is available, resource management methods, in order to select the reference satellite, can be applied to optimise the target localisation and tracking performance.…”

Beamforming Techniques for Passive Radar: An Overview

“…Passive radars are also smaller and less expensive than their active counterparts. Examples of signals that can be used as IoOs in passive radar include frequency modulation (FM) radio [ 4 , 5 ], digital audio broadcasting (DAB) [ 6 ] and digital video broadcasting–terrestrial (DVB-T) [ 7 , 8 ], global system for mobile communications (GSM) [ 9 , 10 ] and long term evolution (LTE) [ 11 ], global navigation satellite system (GNSS) [ 12 , 13 , 14 ] and digital video broadcasting–satellite (DVB-S) [ 15 ], WLAN [ 16 ], and 5G [ 17 , 18 , 19 ] signals. Because the waveforms transmitted by these opportunity transmitters are not optimized for radar applications and there is a lack of control over the transmission parameters, complex signal processing methods are required to detect the weak scattering signal from the targets.…”