Global navigation satellite systems in passive surveillance applications

The possibility to detect and analyze multipath signals of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) caused by aircrafts is an attractive basis for the development of a passive surveillance sensor. Due to the fact that the received signal strength of global navigation satellite systems on earth surface is very low and the radar cross sections (RCS) of an aircraft strongly varies with the illumination and observation angles, such a passive sensor will offer a high probability of detection with respect to a hemispheric field of view preferably in a multistatic sensor array configuration. In this work measurements with a single sensor and considerations about possibilities to range an aircraft with a multistatic sensor array are presented.