A Centralized Ship Localization Strategy for Passive Multistatic Radar Based on Navigation Satellites

This letter focuses on ship target localization using a multistatic passive radar system based on navigation satellites opportunistic illuminators. In such systems, the typical approach to localize the targets is taking peripheral decisions at each bistatic channel to detect the target followed by bistatic ranges intersection. In contrast, here we consider a centralized approach in order to jointly detect and localize the ship target of interest. The proposed approach entirely operates in a Cartesian plane representing the surveyed maritime area and it is able to combine the signals pertaining the different bistatic links despite the variation of the e.m. response of the targets, typically occurring in the framework under consideration as the target is illuminated by multiple (and possibly widely separated) transmitters viewing angles. Moreover, the hypothesis of point-like targets is here replaced with the more realistic case of extended targets (i.e., occupying more than one resolution cell). The ship localization effectiveness of the method is proved via both synthetic and experimental datasets.