Control symbol based fluctuating target detection in DVB-T2 passive radar systems

Passive radars utilize a source of illumination that is primarily intended for other use. The DVB-T2 is a digital television broadcast system that can be used as an illuminator in passive radar configurations. The design of the passive radar systems is especially challenging since there is no control over the transmitted waveforms. In this paper, we propose a method for control symbol based passive radar detection of DVB-T2 signals. It extends our earlier method for fluctuating targets obeying different Swerling models. The distributions of test statistics are derived under different Swerling target fluctuation models. A good performance of the method in low SNR regime is verified with simulations.