Maritime Moving Target Long Time Integration for GNSS-Based Passive Bistatic Radar

Experimental Demonstration of Ship Target Detection in GNSS-Based Passive Radar Combining Target Motion Compensation and Track-before-Detect Strategies

“…However, satellite-based passive radars present some relevant benefits with respect to their terrestrial-based counterparts: Wider accessibility on the global scale, less sensitivity to multipath effects, signals not blocked by mountains, and not reliance on potentially vulnerable infrastructures. Over recent years, the update of the current satellite fleets and the plan of new missions stimulated a rising interest in the development of innovative system concepts and techniques for satellite-based passive radar applications [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”

“…Maritime areas far from land, such as international waters and economic exclusive zones, cannot be reached by the radio waves emitted by ground-based transmitters, but are in the scope of few satellite sources. Suitable candidates are communication satellites such as Inmarsat and Iridium [13,14], broadcasting satellites in geostationary orbits such as Astra and Eutelsat (DVB-S) [15], and Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) [16][17][18][19], with each choice having its own merits and shortcomings in terms of radar operations. Navigation satellites represent the best choice in terms of coverage, with constellation designed to guarantee a persistent and global illumination, even at the poles.…”

“…The works [16,17] are a first introduction to the concept of maritime moving target detection with a GNSS-based passive radar. The experimental results therein provided showed that detecting vessels at sea exploiting the reflections of navigation satellite signals is fundamentally possible, but the chances to reveal the target are low if the target is small and/or far from the receiver.…”

“…Therefore, hybrid coherent/non-coherent integration methods have to be considered. In particular, [17] presents a method able to realize integration over long dwells (tens of seconds) for GNSS-based maritime surveillance. The idea behind this method is segmenting an overall dwell in short time intervals (defining the CPI and hereinafter named frames) and then performing a non-coherent combination of the signal energy pertaining the individual frames.…”

Multistatic Airborne Passive Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging Based on Two-Level Block Sparsity

“…Compared to a traditional active radar system, a passive radar system has the advantages of stealth operation, strong survivability, relative simplicity, and low cost. The available illuminators of opportunity include external sources include FM radio, Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial (DVB-T), China Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting (CMMB), Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), and Wi-Fi signal [2][3][4]. While many passive radar systems are focused on the detection of targets with stationary groundbased receivers, the passive radar systems mounted on the moving airborne platform have received substantial attention in recent years [5][6][7].…”