Experimental results of DTTB‐based passive radar with polarisation diversity reception

Abstract

The surveillance channel of passive bistatic radar (PBR) is always interfered by strong direct-path and multi-path clutter signals. Based on the radar polarisation theory and the operation mode of PBR, the cross-polarisation reception can suppress the strong direct-path interference (DPI) in surveillance channel, however, which is far from perfect. By using Digital Television Terrestrial Broadcasting (DTTB) signal, several polarisation diversity reception experiments of PBR are carried out. The performance of DPI suppression is tested in different receive polarisation. The bistatic polarisation scattering properties of the civil aeroplane and clutter are obtained. From experimental results, cross- polarisation reception can suppress DPI instead of helping receive stronger echoes for better detection performance. In order to solve this problem, a non-coherent integration approach in terms of polarisation diversity reception is given and verified by a tracking experiment for civil aeroplanes. It demonstrates that polarisation diversity reception not only suppresses DPI but also improves detection performance of DTTB-based PBR under comparison with the fixed polarisation reception.