A software defined UMTS passive radar demonstrator

Passive radar systems, also referred to as Passive Coherent Location systems (PCL), exploit non-cooperative illuminators of opportunity (IO) in order to detect and track targets. Some of the main advantages of such systems with respect to conventional radars include low cost architectures, low energy requirements, the capability of operating without any spectrum resource allocation and a potentially null probability of intercept. In this paper, we introduce a passive radar demonstrator based on the use of UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) signals as a source of opportunity. An overview of the UMTS standard and some preliminary measurements are firstly presented in order to verify the suitability of the UMTS waveform for radar applications. Secondly, a low cost software defined experimental radar system is introduced together with a measurement scenario. Finally, some live data detection results are presented and discussed in order to demonstrate the capability of this passive radar system.