Investigation of bandwidth utilisation methods to optimise performance in passive bistatic radar

This thesis reports on research into the field of multiband Passive Bistatic Radar (PBR). The work is based on the premise that it is possible to improve on the PBR range resolution by exploiting the full broadcasted bandwidth from transmitters of opportunity. This work comprises both Frequency Modulated (FM) radio and Digital Video Broadcast - Terrestrial (DVB-T) waveforms. The work shows how the exploitation of the available frequency scattered bandwidth broadcasted from single broadcast towers can be achieved by coherently by combining each of the individual channels/bands, and that the range resolution is improved accordingly. The major contributions of this thesis may be divided into the following parts: Hardware (HW) design and development, algorithm development, simulations, real target data analysis, and finally non-cooperative target recognition and High Range Resolution (HRR) considerations. The work comprises simple PBR performance predictions for various strong transmitters of opportunity in the southeastern parts of Norway. Hardware for data recording was designed, produced and made working. The mathematics for coherently combining non-adjacent single channels/bands in the range correlation was developed. The range resolution performance of the algorithm was supported by theoretical simulations using pseudo random generated signals, as well as simulations using real recorded FM radio and DVB-T signals from nearby strong transmitters. For FM radio and DVB-T airliners and for DVB-T also a propeller aircraft were analyzed. The theoretical claims were supported by the real life target analysis, as the range resolution was improved as predicted for all targets. For the DVB-T waveform, an analysis of the HRR profiles showed that two targets of different type was manually classified as targets of different type. This work has fully closed the circle from idea, HW design, development and testing, theoretical algorithm development and simulations, and finally real world performance analysis as well as target analysis