Enhanced Passive GNSS-Based Radar Imaging Based on Coherent Integrated Multi-Satellite Signals

Weak reflected signal is one of the main problems in a recent developing remote sensing tool—passive GNSS-based radar (GNSS radar). To address this issue, an enhanced GNSS radar imaging scheme on the basis of coherently integrating multiple satellites is proposed. In the proposed scheme, to avoid direct signal interference at surveillance antenna, the satellites that used as transmission of opportunity are in backscattering geometry model. To coherently accumulate echo signal magnitudes of the scene center in the targeted sensing region illuminated by the selected satellites, after performing the paralleled range compressions, a coordinates alignment operator is performed to the respective range domains, in which, pseudorandom noise (PRN) code phases are aligned. Thereafter, the coordinates aligned range compressed signals of the selected satellites are coherently integrated along azimuth domain so that imaging gain is improved and azimuth processing can be accomplished in only one state operation. The theoretical analysis and field proof-of-concept experimental results indicate that compared to both conventional bistatic imaging scheme and the state-of-the-art multi-image fusion scheme, the proposed scheme can provide a higher imaging gain; compared to the state-of-the-art multi-image fusion scheme, the proposed scheme has a less computational complexity and faster algorithm speed.