The troposcatter over-the-horizon (OTH) passive radar plays an important role in the beyond-line-of-sight surveillance, for its high propagation reliability and low probability of interception. However, it has two major limitations, namely, large propagation losses and multipath scattering fading. Since the captured signals are non-stationary with low signal-to-noise ratio, high antenna gain is indispensable, which results in narrow beamwidth. To deal with the contradiction between narrow beamwidth and real-time wide spatial coverage, array receiving is promising. Then, the primary problem is the array signal detection under troposcatter fading correlations. Based on recent troposcatter fading model, this study addresses this passive detection problem in three cases: (i) the spatial–temporal correlation is known, and a Neyman–Pearson detector is proposed as benchmark; (ii) uncertain statistics exist in the spatial–temporal correlation, and a generalised likelihood ratio test is adopted to overcome this uncertainty; (iii) the fading correlation is totally unknown, and a spatial–temporal weighted covariance-based detector is proposed. The performances of the proposed detectors are verified by Monte-Carlo simulations and experiments in a linear array, which is instructive for this kind of passive radar design in practical. Comparisons with existing detectors and the benchmark confirm the feasibility and effectiveness for troposcatter OTH passive radar.

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Target detection for a kind of troposcatter over-the-horizon passive radar based on channel fading information

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