Analysis and emulation of FM radio signals for passive radar

Due to its high power levels provided, and its wide coverage, FM radio could be a good opportunity transmitter for passive coherent location (PCL) radar systems. In this paper we study the effectiveness of FM signals as radar waveforms by means of simulated and real data analysis. To this purpose, an emulation of FM radio transmitter is presented, whose outputs are compared with real FM data collected by an experimental digital receiver. In this way, we also achieve a reliable instrument to optimize target detection performance by a successive adaptive signal processing. To complete the analysis of opportunity waveforms, the signals' self-ambiguity functions and spectra are evaluated, so it is possible to improve the knowledge of how to select the most appropriate FM channel. Since emulated data differ from real data in means of the transmission channel, a statistical analysis of the real channel is presented. ©2007 IEEE.