Pilot-based detection for DVB-T passive coherent location radars

Abstract

This study investigates the feasibility of pilot-based detection for passive coherent location (PCL) radars exploiting digital video broadcasting-terrestrial (DVB-T) signals. The DVB-T signal is formed by two parts: a data signal and a pilot signal. The parameters of the pilot signal are known thanks to the DVB-T standards that permit the generation (at the receiver) of the pilot signal. The pilot recovery technique, based on the known DVB-T standard, is utilised in DVB-T based PCL systems to reduce the number of the reception channels by considering a locally generated pilot signal as a reference signal. Consequently, no reference channel is required, which reduces the cost and the complexity of the resulting PCL system. In this work, the authors propose a signal processing method to achieve this goal. They consider theoretical analysis, simulations and real-data results to validate the feasibility of such a system.