Multi-target Detection by Distributed Passive Radar Systems without Reference Signals

In this paper we consider a passive radar system which doesn’t rely on the reception of reference signals from direct paths. A blind channel estimation based method is derived by exploring the relationship among the transmitted signal, the channel response and the received signal. With the help of this novel method, multiple incoming targets illuminated by a non-cooperative transmitter can be detected by a distributed radar system with at least two receivers. Numerical results demonstrate the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed method and some characteristics of the detector, namely, the performance as a function of the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and the number of radar receivers.