DVB-T Passive Radar experimental comparisons of a custom made Passive Radar receiver, RFSoC and a Software Defined Radio

In order to select the best passive bistatic radar receiver design, we have collected data of flying aircraft with three different passive radar systems in parallel. This has been done to evaluate relative performance and different architecture selections. One is a purpose-built passive radar system, another an Ettus X310 with TwinRX front-end high-end Commercial-Off-the-Shelf Software Defined Radio, and the last is based on a 1st generation Xilinx RF System on Chip (RFSoC). The comparisons include dynamic range of the resulting range-Doppler maps, and aircraft target signal-to-interference-and-noise-ratio (SINR) differences between the systems. The results based on digital television broadcasts show no significant differences between the systems, giving great flexibility in selection of receiver design. The direct-RF approach of the RFSoC can provide cost, weight and power reductions when many reception channels are required, but the super-heterodyning approach may have advantages in adapting to different locations and suppressing interfering signals.