Experimental study of polarisation technique on multi-FM-based passive radar

The receiver and transmitter polarisations (RTPs) have great influence on detection performance in multi-FM-based passive radar. As the transmitter polarisation is uncontrollable in passive radar, the purpose of this study is to determine the appropriate receiver polarisation of the surveillance channel. Firstly, the impact of polarisation on radar detection performance is discussed from three aspects. Then, the probability of detection is used as a metric to select the better RTPs. Theoretical results show that, when most of the transmitted signals in the working band are vertically polarised, the horizontally polarised receiver can obtain better detection performance than the vertically polarised one. Finally, theoretical results are confirmed by field experiments.