The Research On GPS-Based Passive Radar Techniques

Passive radars have become an important research area of modern radars for their excellent performance advantages in anti-elint, anti-electronic counter-countermeasure, anti-stealth targets, anti-radiation missile, anti-extra low flight. The passive radars are generally referred to as those utilizing the electromagnetic signals scattered from the radar targets. The scattering signals can be the signals scattered from self-targets or be the target signals reflected from the third-party illuminating signals. This dissertation studies the passive radars utilizing the third-party signals as the illuminating sources.The illuminating sources available include signals transmitted by local broadcast station, television station, communication station, satellite for living broadcast television, satellite for navigation and position and so on. The local TV/FM-based passive radars have got wide attentions, while the GPS-based passive radars are under investigation. The GPS signals have performance advantages in high security and all-day/all-weather existence over other local station signals. Therefore, the application of this type of signals to passive radars is explored in this dissertation. The research consists of radar system components, processing modules and their realization techniques and is expected to lay a foundation for further development of practical systems.The main contributions of the dissertation are as follows:1. Simulator design of GPS signal sourcesAccording to GPS signal generation and transmission, a GPS signal simulator is developed. Then moving target models are built by considering the geometrical structure of the space targets. These researches provide the simulated data in the following development.2. Analyses of the GPS signal characteristicThe analyses are conducted on the ambiguity characteristics of typical commercial radio signals including broadcast signals, television signals, mobile communication signals and satellite signals. Upon comparisons of their range and Doppler resolutions, the GPS ambiguity functions for bistatic radar systems are further explored. The performance merits in terms of energy, range, Doppler and resolution cell are also revealed. The results show that the GPS signals are suitable for radar illuminating sources.3. Radar system designThe maximum detection range and localization algorithms are investigated. The...