Passive ISAR With DVB-T Signals

• Published in: IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing Vol. 51; no. 8; pp. 4508 - 4517
• Main Authors: Olivadese, Domenico, Giusti, Elisa, Petri, Dario, Martorella, Marco, Capria, Amerigo, Berizzi, Fabrizio
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.08.2013; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Broadcasting; Digital television; Digital video broadcasting; Geometry; Gratings; Illuminators; Image resolution; inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR); Lobes; passive coherent localization system; Passive radar; Radar; range-Doppler (RD) map; Receivers; Signal processing; Signal resolution; Target tracking
• ISSN: 0196-2892; 1558-0644
• DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2012.2236339

As recently demonstrated, passive radars are able to detect and track targets by exploiting illuminators of opportunity. In this paper, it will be proven that the same concept can be extended to passive inverse synthetic aperture radar (P-ISAR) imaging. A suitable type of signal processing is proposed that is able to form P-ISAR images starting from range-Doppler maps, which represent the output of passive-radar signal processing. Multiple-channel digital television broadcasting (DVB)-T signals are used to demonstrate the concept as they provide enough range resolution to form meaningful ISAR images. The problem of grating lobes, which are generated by the DVB-T signal, is also addressed and solved.