An Analysis of Bistatic Radar

This paper briefly describes some of the characteristics, capabilities, and limitations of the bistatic radar when used for the detection and location of targets such as aircraft or satellites. (A bistatic radar is one in which the receiver is physically separated from the transmitter so that the echo signal does not travel over the same path as the transmitted signal.) Among the topics discussed are the type of information available from the received signal, methods for extracting information from the bistatic radar signal, bistatic radar equation, target cross sections, and the properties of the bistatic radar fence. Throughout the paper the bistatic radar is continually compared to the conventional monostatic radar. It is concluded that although the bistatic radar has several interesting attributes, it is not as generally applicable as the more versatile monostatic radar because of the limited fence-type coverage and the difficulty of extracting target location information. An appendix is included which describes the multiple-frequency CW method for measuring distance as applied to either the bistatic or the monostatic radar.