Target Detection for Passive Bistatic Radar With Direct-Path Interference

Abstract

For passive radar target detection, existing studies are based on the ideal assumption that the reference channel is noiseless and the direct-path interference from the illuminator is absentfom the surveillance channel. In this paper, we develop a novel target detector for passive bistatic radar. The proposed detector considers a practically motivated scenario, where the reference channel is contaminated by noise and the surveillance channel is polluted by a direct-path interference that is usually neglected by prior studies. It resorts to the generalized likelihoodratio test (GLRT), which is equivalent to replacing all the unknown parameters with their maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs). Moreover, simulation results demonstrate that the proposed detector achieves better performance when direct-path interference exists in the surveillance channel.