Reduced complexity generalised likelihood ratio detector for digital video broadcasting terrestrial-based passive radar

The high resolution of the digital video broadcasting terrestrial (DVB-T) signals leads to a dramatically large number of observation samples in an integration time of a DVB-T-based passive radar. Hence, because of the high computational complexity (CC), applying extensive cancellation algorithm and generalised likelihood ratio (GLR) detector seems to be impractical in the DVB-T-based passive radars. In this study, the authors derive a reduced complexity GLR detector for the DVB-T-based passive radar in the presence of the clutter, the interfering targets and the noise. The proposed detector employs the split received signal to reduce the CC substantially compared with the methods that process the whole signal at once. Moreover, the CC reduction in the proposed method does not lead to a degradation in Doppler resolution and the detection performance. Simulation results are also corroborated with the theoretical analysis.