DVB-S based passive radar imaging of ship targets

This work investigates the potentialities of DVB-S based passive ISAR for maritime surveillance applications. Specifically, in order to characterize the bound on the achievable performance, a knowledge based approach is adopted: assuming known the target motion, the image is focused in both the range/Doppler domain and the x-y plane via backprojection. The approach is applied to experimental data acquired during a field trial by exploiting an experimental system developed at Fraunhofer FHR. Obtained results clearly demonstrate the potentialities of DVB-S based passive ISAR at providing output products suitable for the extraction of the length/width of the ship and of its shape.