Passive ISAR With DVB-T Signals

Abstract

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.