High Range Resolution DVB-T Passive Radar

Passive Radar systems, also referred to as Passive Coherent Location systems (PCL), exploit reflections from illuminators of opportunity (IO) in order to detect and track objects. Digital waveforms like DVB-T and UMTS [1] signals offer wide bandwidth channels which allow achieving good spatial resolution. Moreover, they have spectral properties which are nearly independent of the signal content. Such waveforms exhibit an ambiguity function with a thumb-tack shape and bandwidth that is constant in time. This paper focus on the usage of multiple channels of the same IO (e.g.: DVB-T or UMTS channels) in order to improve range resolution and make target recognition and radar imaging feasible. Specifically, two different architectures based on the exploitation of multiple DVB-T channels have been considered. A DVB-T transmission system has been simulated with a Simulink (R) model compliant to [2]. Simulation results are presented and discussed in order to evaluate the system performance in terms of spatial resolution.