Radio Astronomy Techniques for Multistatic Radar Imaging and Localization of Space Objects

This paper explores the application of aperture synthesis techniques for radio astronomy to multistatic radar with the goal of improving image quality and relative positioning precision for practical array geometries. In a step towards achieving this goal, a new multistatic radar approach is proposed that incorporates aperture synthesis processing. The feasibility of this approach is demonstrated via analytical results and simulation. The approach is then compared to conventional multistatic radar processing, where, for the same geometry, the conventional method is found to produce superior reconstructions in terms of signal-to-sidelobe level. However, the proposed approach is advantageous for two reasons. First, if a radio astronomy array and correlator already exist, the new method will generate acceptable images. Second, timing and synchronization requirements on the transmitters can be relaxed in the new method, allowing low-cost, low-complexity transmitters to be utilized.