Ghost peaks mitigation with target-contaminated reference signal in passive bistatic radar

Area of Science:

• Electrical Engineering
• Radar Systems
• Signal Processing

Background:

• Passive bistatic radar (PBR) utilizes non-cooperative illuminators like FM radio and cellular signals for cost-effective and resilient surveillance.
• A critical challenge in PBR is reference channel contamination by target echoes, leading to ghost peaks in the range-Doppler map.
• These ghost peaks share the target's Doppler but have incorrect range, complicating detection and degrading system performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the formation mechanism of ghost peaks in passive bistatic radar from a matched-filter perspective.
• To propose and evaluate a novel ghost peak suppression strategy for PBR systems.
• To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in reducing false alarms and maintaining target detection.

Main Methods:

• Ghost peak formation mechanism analyzed using matched-filter theory.
• Proposed suppression strategy combines multi-frame consistency analysis with anchor-based masking.
• Lightweight post-detection processing applied to remove spurious responses without complex reconstruction.

Main Results:

• Simulations using synthesized data from measured FM broadcasts show effective ghost peak suppression.
• The method successfully reduces false tracks across various contamination scenarios.
• Reliable target detection is maintained with low computational overhead.

Conclusions:

• The proposed multi-frame consistency and anchor-based masking approach offers a practical solution for mitigating target-induced contamination in PBR.
• The method's lightweight nature makes it efficient for real-time passive radar applications.
• This technique significantly enhances the reliability and accuracy of passive bistatic radar detection systems.