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DVB-T based passive radar

Conference Paper · April 2014

DOI: 10.1109/Radioelek.2014.6828433

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 DVB-T Based Passive Radar

Tamás Pető, Levente Dudás, Rudolf Seller

Radar Research Group
Broadband Infocommunications and Electromagnetic Theory Department
Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Budapest, Hungary
Email:petotamas.mk@gmail.com, dudas@mht.bme.hu, seller@mht.bme.hu

Abstract—A Passive radar system is able to operate fully In order to build up the simplest model, it is sufficient to take
independent of illuminators of opportunity. In most cases these into account only two paths. One of them is the direct path
illuminator sources are traditional telecommunication or broad- signal from transmitter tower to the radar and the other is the
cast signals. During the design of a passive radar we are trying signal which reflects from the airplane.
to exploit the opportunities of an already existing system, thus
we need to face such problems that could be simply eliminated
during the design of a traditional active radar. The properties of
the used source of illumination essentially determines the overall
performance of the system. The Digital Video Broadcasting -
Terrestrial (DVB-T) signal has beneficial properties from our
viewpoint, therefore it offers a great opportunity to develop
an effectively operating system. Nowadays passive radars are
gaining ground and become more popular. Now, that the so j2πfdt
αr s(t- ) e
far insurmountable technological limitations begin to disappear,
beside the theoretical researches the investigation of realizations Tx
with the recently available hardware technologies are becoming
more important. This paper presents a feasibility experiment of αd s(t) Rx
a DVB-T based passive radar using simplified models.
Keywords—passive radar, PCL experiment, air surveillance,
DVB-T
Fig. 1. Passive radar main signal paths

I. I NTRODUCTION Signals that propagate in different paths are suppressed

independently. Let us denote the attenuation of the direct path
Passive radars are able to detect and track targets with
with αd , and the loss of the reflected wave path with αr . Beside
using non-cooperate transmitters of opportunity. A traditional
the propagation losses the different signals arrive with different
active radar operates in such a way that it emits well specified
time lags to the receiver, because of their finite propagation
radar signals, and those reflects from targets. These target
speed. The time difference between the lag of direct path signal
reflections are then received and processed. In contrast to active
and the reflected signal is denoted by τ = tr − td . The signal
systems passive radars do not emit anything, but they uses
reflected from a moving target will also suffer the effect of
the signals from other sources in their environment to detect
Doppler shift which depends upon the speed and geometric
targets. Since these radars do not need to contain dedicated
position of the airplane. It is denoted by fd .
transmitter units, therefore the cost of operation and production
is significantly lower. Owing to its beneficial properties in Thus, the received signal is composed of two components
recent years a number of scientific papers address the operation traveling separate paths.
of passive radars [5]. Several of these papers study in depth the Based on these the received signal r(t) can be written as:
capabilities of the illuminating sources [7],[5]. Among the so
far investigated sources of illumination the DVB-T signal has
outstanding correlation properties, therefore it could be suitable r(t) = αd s(t) + αr s(t − τ ) ej2πfd t (1)
to utilize as a reference source. The main purpose of this
paper is to confirm with measurements the so far theoretically In other words, the received signal is composed of two
investigated methods. signals, the direct path signal, and the time delayed and
Doppler shifted copy of the same signal. Thus, the detection
II. T HEORY OF OPERATION is performed by searching the τ time delayed and fd Doppler
shifted copy of the direct path signal or also know as reference
In this section a simplified model of the passive radar signal in the received signal. Practically it can be done with
will be presented. Based on this model, the fundamentals correlation calculation. By calculating the auto-correlation
of the detection can be understood. Figure (1) illustrates function of the received signal, we get correlation peaks with
the operation of the passive radar. Signals emitted from the maximum signal to noise ratio where the received signal is
transmitter tower can reach the receiver antenna of the radar identical to itself time delayed version as close as possible. In
on a number of different paths (also including the direct path). order to get maximum enhancement in the correlation function,
the direct path signal needs to be corrected with the same fd
Doppler frequency. Since the exact speed and therefore the
Doppler frequency of the target are not known priori at the
receiver side, the reference signal must be shifted with all the
possible Doppler frequencies.
During the detection, the first step is to generate the Doppler
shifted versions of the receiver signal, and then calculate the
cross-correlation functions between these auxiliary signals and
the original received signal. From the number of calculated
correlation function we can compose a two-dimensional func-
tion, which maximums denote those Doppler frequencies and
time values where the received signal that contains the reflected Fig. 2. Ambiguity function of the Analog TV signal
signal matches with the signal transmitted by the broadcast
tower.
Afterwards, the detection of the airplane can be performed the spectrum’s smoothness, the more ambiguities will arise in
with the calculation of the following two-dimensional Doppler- the ambiguity function [3]. The analog TV signal does not
delay cross-correlation function: meet these conditions due to the way its transfer the image
information, and its built in sync signals.
Z ∞
χ(τ, fd ) = r(t) r∗ (t − τ ) ej2πfd t dt (2)
−∞
B. DVB-T signal
The cross-correlation calculation acts as if the signal would
pass through a matched filter. Based on this principle the However, the digital video broadcasting terrestrial signal is
Doppler-delay correlation function represents such an output sufficiently randomized due to the used (Orthogonal frequency-
of a matched filter bank, where the filter bank is composed division multiplexing) OFDM modulation technique, and the
of the reference signal and its Doppler shifted copies. In the used channel and source coding. The OFDM modulation has
following section the efficiency of the matched filter bank will nearly ’white’ spectrum because it transfers the data on closely
be examined depending on the used reference signal. spaced phase-shift keying or quadrature amplitude modulated
carriers. The ambiguity function of the DVB-T signal can be
III. A MBIGUITY FUNCTION ANALYSIS seen in Figure (3).
Since we are using cross-correlation computing in the According to the figure, the ambiguity function of the
signal processing algorithms, the investigation of the corre- DVB-T signal provides approximately 50 dB dynamic range.
lation properties of the used illuminator sources is essential. This dynamic range (as the next section will show) is high
In order to analyze the potential opportunities of the used enough to identify the correlation peaks arising from target re-
illuminator signal the ambiguity function of the signal must flections. Although, the DVB-T signal has far higher dynamic
be examined. The calculation procedure of the ambiguity range then analog TV has, but some unwanted deterministic
function is identical in this case to the calculation method of peaks are also generated due to the guard interval and the
the Doppler-delay correlation function (2) used for detecting pilots. In some cases, these ambiguities can make it difficult to
targets given in section (II). detect targets, hence it is advisable to eliminate these unwanted
If the used illuminator signal well correlates with the time peaks [3],[6],[4],[8].
and Doppler shifted copy of itself, it means that during the
detection the reflected signals can not be identified with a high
degree of certainty. In other words, the matched filter bank
made from the illuminator signal can not be operate effectively
because there is not enough high dynamic range between the
outputs of the matched filter bank.
The ambiguity functions presented in the next two subsec-
tions are calculated using MATLAB. During the course of
calculations the maximum Doppler frequency has chosen to
500 Hz according to the speed of an average target. The used
coherent time processing interval for these evaluated functions
is approximately 60 ms.

A. Analog TV signal Fig. 3. Ambiguity function of the DVB-T signal

Figure (2) shows the ambiguity function of the analog TV

signal used in Hungary. The ambiguity function of the analog
TV signal not nearly provides high enough dynamic range to IV. M EASUREMENT EXPERIMENT
detect reflections.
In this section a DVB-T based passive radar experimental
In general, it can be said that a signal has advantageous measurement will be presented. The main goal of the mea-
correlation properties if the structure of the signal is noise- surement is to confirm in reality the above discussed DVB-T
like with broadband smooth spectrum. The more we disturb based passive radar’s principle of operation.
A. Preliminary calculations path signal in order to ensure successful detection.
It is advisable to choose that location as the measurement
site where the moving target passes close to the receiver The measurements has taken with an 8 element Yagi
antenna of the radar, because there the power of the reflected antenna that has 15 dB front-back ratio. By using this receiver
signal is relatively high. Because of the reasons above, the antenna the power level difference between the direct path
Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport was chosen as the signal and the reflected signal can be further improved by
measurement site. To prepare the measurement and to estimate 15 dB. According to the previously discussed assumptions the
the expected results based on the theory of detection, the minimum power level of reflected signal can be obtained. Thus
expected power levels were calculated using the bistatic radar we get, Pmin = −35 dBm − 50 dB − 15 dB = −100 dBm.
equation [1],[2].
By rearrange equation (3) the maximum distance can be
calculated in the knowledge of the minimum detectable power
Pt Gt σb Gr λ2 level : [1],[2]
Pref lected = (3)
(4π)3 Rt 2 Rr 2
s
Pt σλ2
Pt Gt Gr λ2 Rt Rr = (5)
Pref erence = (4) (4π)3 Pmin
(4π)2 L2
Denotations are the same as in the equation above (3).
, where Using formula (5) we get 4.3 km for the maximum estimated
• Pt → 100 kW- is the power of the transmitter at range. Therefore, according to the calculations the correlation
’Széchenyi hill’ peak arising from the reflected signal can be detected from
this distance.
• Gt → 1- gain of the transmitter antenna
By using the following equation (6) the Doppler shift of
• Rt - distance between the transmitter and the target the reflected signal can also be estimated [1],[2].
• Rr - distance between the receiver and the target  
2v β
• 2
σb → 100m - bistatic RCS (average airplane RCS) fDoppler = cos (θ) cos (6)
λ 2
• L → 26 km -baseline distance , where θ and β are geometrical parameters of the measurement
• Gr → 9 dBi -gain of the receiver antenna setup. Based on the average speed of the taking of airplanes
(v = 330 kmh ) the expected Doppler frequency is fDoppler '
• λ = 0.5 m- wavelength 300 Hz.
Currently at the utilized 610 MHz frequency there are oper- To perform the calculations, the geometrical parameters
ating three transmitter. These can be found at the ’Szécshenyi were obtained with the use of the Google Earth program.
hill’, at the ’Hármashatár hill’ and one in the ’Száva street’.
The measurement setup can be seen in Figure (4). Based on B. Measurement setup
the calculations, the power level of the highest direct path
signal is produced by the transmitter at ’Széchenyi hill’. This In order to install the measurement setup simply we used
is approximately −35 dBm. general purpose hardware elements. Such as the (National
Instruments) NI 2920 universal software radio (USRP) which
is used to receive and acquire the radio frequency signals. In
the present case it is an obvious choice, because it is not
necessary to design and fabricate the receiver device to test
the functionality of the passive radar’s basic principle. The
schematic build-up of the measurement is illustrated on figure
(5). The software radio receives the signal that come from
the Yagi antenna which is designed for this measurement.
After that the USRP samples the analog down mixed-signal
it transfers the data to a PC through gigabit ethernet. On the
PC side a Labview program acquires the samples and performs
the Doppler-delay correlation process.

Labviewbsignalbprocessing
Yagibantenna

NIbUSRP Data Doppler Cross Scalingb&

Fig. 4. Transmitter and receiver positions softwarebradio acquisition Shift Correlation Display

In the knowledge of the DVB-T signal’s dynamic range

we know, that the minimum power level of the reflected
signal can be 50 dB lower than the power level of the direct Fig. 5. Measurement setup
 The main settings of the software radio were the following: most important limitation factor is the direct path interference
which covered or masked the reflections came from higher
• operation frequency → f = 610 MHz distances.
• IQ sampling rate → fs = 9 MHz
VI. C ONCLUSION
• bit resolution → 16bit
In the first section the fundamental operation principles of
• acquired number of samples → 106 passive radars and the basics of the signal processing methods
were presented.
V. M EASUREMENT RESULTS
After the samples were collected the Doppler-delay corre- In the second section the properties of the illuminators
lation function was calculated for some consecutive snapshot off opportunity were analyzed. The analog TV signal and the
based on equation (2). DVB-T signal were examined in details. In the knowledge of
the available dynamic ranges the DVB-T signal is proposed
The processed number of samples to calculate each snap- to utilize as the illuminator source.
shot was 106 sample, which is equivalent to 110 ms. That is
the value of the coherent time processing interval. By merging In the third section a full value demonstration measurement
the single snapshots we got the results show in figures (6) and were presented. According to the measurement results, it
(7). It is seen in the figures that a correlation peak appears can be concluded that the target detection method of passive
around the previously estimated Doppler-frequency (300 Hz) radars as it is studied previously is proved to be correct.
and it moves away both in Doppler frequency and in time
delay coordinates on the calculated correlation functions from One of the major limitations in detection range for most
snapshot to snapshot passive radar systems is the masking due to the direct path
interference. An obvious solution for this principal problem
could be the application of phased array antenna systems [9].

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The research reported here was supported by the National
Development Agency (NFÜ, Hungary) as part of the project
Introduction of Cognitive Methods for UAV Collision Avoid-
ance Using Millimeter Wave Radar, UWBSRR12, 2012-2015.

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Fig. 6. Measurement result - 2D CCF perspective view
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Having examined the obtained correlation functions at 0 Hz
we find quite a lot of correlation peaks that are not related
to structure of the DVB-T signal. Therefore the radar also
received a number of reflected signals that came from the
surrounding terrain objects. This effect can greatly destroy the
enhancement of the useful correlation peaks. Nevertheless, the

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