Satellite Manoeuvre Detection with Multistatic Radar

Abstract

Traditional radar sensors used for surveillance rely on monostatic radar principles. However, recently the use of remote radio frequency telescopes as bistatic receivers represents an interesting way to reuse existing facilities while providing additional information to improve tracking accuracy. In this paper we study the benefits of using such a system for the task of manoeuvre detection in satellites in LEO and MEO. We investigate the conditions in which a multistatic radar is advantageous for this purpose, and show concrete results based on simulated data. Moreover, we propose novel manoeuvre detection methods, and compare their accuracy to methods found in the literature. A more general way of assessing the accuracy of these manoeuvre detection methods is also proposed, with the aim of taking into account that the parameters of the manoeuvre that actually takes place also have an effect on the accuracy. These can be split into optimal control based methods, and statistical methods. We found the addition of multistatic radar to allow considerable improvement in the accuracy of the manoeuvre detection process, an improvement that is shown to be greater the greater the baseline, i.e., the distance of the receiver to the transmitter. Furthermore, the manoeuvre detection methods that accurately model the uncertainty in the measurements were found to be the most accurate.

Securing Your Airspace: Detection of Drones Trespassing Protected Areas

“…Multistatic radars expand on the bistatic concept by utilizing multiple receivers and, in some cases, multiple transmitters [77]. This configuration offers enhanced coverage and detection capabilities, as multiple perspectives on the target can reveal its position and movement with greater accuracy and robustness against countermeasures [78][79][80][81][82]. Multistatic setups can effectively detect stealth aircraft, which are designed primarily to evade monostatic radars, by exploiting the varied angles of incidence and reflection captured by the dispersed receivers.…”

Performance analysis of ground‐based long baseline radar distributed systems for space situational awareness

“…[20], the radar parameters of range and Doppler rate are replaced by its Cartesian equivalents of position and speed. The reason behind using Cartesian coordinates is that it will be more helpful for performing later SSA tasks [11] and is easier to visualise, having similar plots as in ref. [21].…”

“…Hence, if one of the bistatic pairs returns in an incorrect location detection of the target because of its low signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR), the other readings could help to detect it correctly, as seen in Section 4. Moreover, multi‐static radars can offer better behaviour characterisation of the space object [11]. Being able to have multiple receivers in the multistatic radar will open the possibility of increasing the SNR of the target if the fusion of the radar data is performed with proper methods, such as the multiple‐input‐multiple‐output (MIMO) ambiguity function (AF).…”