Measurements Accuracy Evaluation for ATSC Signal Based Passive Radar Systems

The detection and tracking performance of passive radar systems can be enhanced by exploiting multiple emitters and one receiver site by allowing for multiple bistatic geometries. This article investigates the measurement accuracy of passive radar systems that employ the advanced television system committee (ATSC 1.0) signal as a signal of opportunity. The monostatic and bistatic modified Cramer–Rao lower bound for the range and velocity measurements are derived as a quantitative way to evaluate the performance variation when exploiting multiple transmitters. The effect of 3D target position on the signal-to-noise ratio, with respect to stationary transmitters and receiver, is highlighted. Furthermore, signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio modeling is included by considering the direct signal interference suppression performance for a set of transmitters. An example in Columbus, Ohio, for a single receiver and multiple digital television transmitters that are spatially distributed is presented to find the optimal emitter that yields the best range and velocity measurement in the analyzed area. Target-tracking experiments show an agreement between the optimal emitter map and the tracking quality for the set of transmitters.