Analysis of detection performance of incoherent range walk compensation for passive radar

Abstract

This paper analyzes the performance of an incoherent range walk compensation method for passive radar systems. The method utilizes the velocity information in the range-Doppler map, and no detection before compensation is demanded. Our contribution is to analyze the performance on data from actual measurements of Digital Video Broadcast-Terrestrial (DVB-T) signals in the UHF band. Detection thresholds for a specified false alarm probability were computed from an Erlangian probability distribution, with moments estimated from the data. Two different targets in two datasets were studied. Extending the integration time from 0.26 s and 0.52 s to 4.2 s caused an increase in the target to threshold ratio of 5-7 dB. The method is limited to targets with little Doppler walk during the integration time. Final conclusions on detection performance cannot be made until more targets have been analyzed.