Ricerc@Sapienza

This paper addresses the detection of surface slow moving targets by means of an array passive radar based on low-EIRP satellite illuminators of opportunity. Particularly, the use of the receiving array of K elements is considered to provide increased detection capability for targets with limited radar cross section, together with the capability to estimate the target direction-of-arrival. A full processing scheme is proposed to exploit together both the long integration times and the multiple receiving elements.

This paper puts forward a moving target detection technique for space-based passive radar. The main drawback of satellite transmitters for radar applications is the very low power density on the ground level, which requires long integration times to adequately increase the signal to background ratio. To this aim, in this paper a new technique is proposed relying on a hybrid coherent/non-coherent integration of the received signal in the Fractional Fourier Transform (FrFT) domain.