Passive radar prototypes for multifrequency target detection

This paper describes two experimental prototypes of FM radio based passive radar receivers developed and fielded at the INFOCOM Dept. of the University of Rome "La Sapienza". The two prototypes are based on two different design approaches: direct IF sampling and signal down-conversion & baseband sampling. The acquisition campaigns that have been carried out with the two prototypes are described together with the collected data analysis and processing. Specifically, we consider the high diversity of the FM radio signals received over different carrier frequencies spanning the 88+108MHz received bandwidth since it represents the basis for the request of a multi-frequency operation. The joint exploitation of the opportunity waveforms received on multiple FM radio channels is shown to yield better performance in terms of detection capability. To this purpose, the results obtained over the collected data set for the single FM channels and after a proper multi-frequency integration procedure are reported and compared.