Multistatic passive ISAR based on geostationary satellites for coastal surveillance

The paper proposes a Passive Multistatic ISAR mode (PM-ISAR) for coastal surveillance based on the exploitation of multiple transmitting satellites and a single receiver (with multiple receiving channels). A proper processing technique able to focus the single bistatic images of the ship target of interest, to align them to the same reference plane and to properly combine them is introduced. The use of multiple transmitters allows a proper integration of the information concerning the different scattering centers of the target when observed by different bistatic pairs. Thus the resulting multistatic ISAR image could be very useful for ATR (Automatic Target Recognition) purposes. © 2013 IEEE.