Signal Receiving and Processing Platform of the Experimental Passive Radar for Intelligent Surveillance System Using Software Defined Radio Approach

This document presents a signal receiving and processing platform for an experimental FM radio based multistatic passive radar utilizing Software Defined Radio. This radar was designed as a part of the intelligent surveillance system. Our platform consists of a reconfigurable multi-sensor antenna, radio frequency (RF) front-end hardware mid personal computer host executing modified GNU Radio code. As the RF hardware (receiver and downconverter) the Universal Software Radio Peripherals were used. We present and discuss different approaches to construct the multichannel receiver at signal processing platform for passive radar utilizing USRP devices and GNU Radio. Received signals after downconverting on the PPGA of the USRP are transmitted to the PC host where second stage of data processing takes place: namely digital beamforming. Digital beamforming algorithm estimates echo signals reflected from flying target. After estimating echo signals Range-Doppler surfaces can be computed in order to estimate the target position.