Ship Detection with DVB-T Software Defined Passive Radar

Passive radar systems exploit non-cooperative transmitter to detect targets in areas of interest. Some of the main advantages of such systems with respect to conventional radars include low cost architectures, low energy requirements and potentially null probability of intercept. Digital waveforms like DVB-T and UMTS signals offer relatively wide bandwidth channels which allow achieving good spatial resolution. Moreover, they have spectral properties which are nearly independent of the signal content. In this paper a software defined passive radar system based on the use of DVB-T signals is proposes and live data detection results are presented in order to demonstrate the detection capabilities.