An Experimental Study of Passive Bistatic Radar Using Uncooperative Radar as a Transmitter

This letter proposes a signal processing method of passive bistatic radar (PBR) exploiting an uncooperative radar as an illuminator. Compared with other opportunity illuminators, the transmitting signal of a radar usually has a better ambiguity function, which leads to a higher range resolution. Two channels are needed in PBR system. The reference channel is used to estimate radar signal parameters and reconstruct directly propagated signal. The surveillance channel is used to receive scattered wave. An array antenna and a simultaneous multibeam algorithm are necessary in the surveillance channel due to the flexible beam scanning of the uncooperative radar. The procedure of the proposed method is explained in detail, which is then followed by a field experiment. Preliminary results from the field experiment show that the proposed method can be applied to target angle and bistatic range measurement successfully.