Multichannel passive radar receiver platform

Passive radars exploit the already existing signals in the environment to detect targets. The available sources of illuminations have a very wide range both in frequency of operation and bandwidth. The capability of fast and effective reconfiguration has especially great importance on this field. Software defined radio systems can be flexible enough to receive any of the illuminator signals with the desired bandwidth. In the same time multichannel operation is also a key component of passive radars as they must able to apply digital beamforming techniques to achieve high dynamic range. Combining these technologies the presently available passive radars surveillance capabilities can greatly increase. This paper addresses the development of a multichannel software defined passive radar receiver. The effective operation of the receiver platform is presented through the design and measurement results of a DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcast-Terrestrial) based passive radar.