Track-Before-Detect Procedures in AM Radio-Based Passive Radar

In amplitude modulation radio-based passive radar, the track-before-detect (TBD) procedures are performed to process long time observation data. This work mainly focuses on the tracking of the time-Doppler and time-azimuth traces of multiple target under real scenarios such as low signal-to-noise ratio, hybrid clutter, severe breaking points, and intersecting traces. A new original approach to deal with the TBD problem of this work is developed. Two types of linear equations according to the simplified radio wave propagation model are formulated, which is the key point of the proposed method. We make the theoretical analysis about how the linear equations can be used to track multiple target, and how multiple target’s constant velocities and initial positions can be estimated, which is an additional parameter estimation capability of the proposed method. Both the simulated data and real experimental data are performed with the proposed method and some conventional TBD methods. Several comparisons of the results are given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.