Towards a Range-doppler UHF Multistatic Radar for the Detection of Non-cooperative Targets with Low RCS

Abstract

The multistatic radar proposed in this paper is composed of a transmitter, placed in a high altitude site, at least four receivers distributed in a low altitude area and a central processing station. The transmitter emits a FMCW signal in the air which is reflected by the natural environment and the targets inside the radar's coverage area. The line of sight signal and the collected signal scattered from the surrounding objects are collected from each receiver and a processing algorithm is applied to measure range/doppler and separate the moving air vehicles from the stationary targets (clutter). The targets' range/doppler measurements from every receiver are sent to a central processing station where data fusion of the distributed measurements is performed. A list of the existing tracks is maintained, updated and managed, while deghosting is also applied to remove the pseudo-targets generated from geometrical ambiguities. The main goal of this multistatic radar system is to take advantage of the bistatic RCS to increase the probability of detection of targets with very low monostatic RCS. In addition, the transmitter's task is limited only to produce the desired waveform while the receiver performs a totally passive process, which makes it less vulnerable to intercept. Finally, it must be noticed that proper techniques are used for the estimation of the targets' characteristics while the receiver's operation remains simple and low cost.