How Passive Radar Works

(passiveradar.com)

49 points | by surprisetalk 2 days ago ago

19 comments

  • Geo_ge 3 minutes ago

    There is a lot of talk of military uses here, but this technique is also used for environmental monitoring.

    GNSS interferometric reflectometry (GNSS-IR) uses navigation satellites as the transmitter for a bi-static radar. The measurement device is any GNSS receiver (even your phone).

    The technique can estimate environmental parameters like sea level, soil moisture, snow depth, and vegetation water content from systematic changes in the the multi-path around the antenna.

    There is an open source Python package for this technique: https://github.com/kristinemlarson/gnssrefl

    An introductory paper "The Accidental Tide Gauge": https://www.kristinelarson.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/La...

  • amoshebb 38 minutes ago

    I read a lot about passive radars trying to leech off of opportunistic waves, and lots about actual troops preferring to play hide-and-seem with anti-radiation weapons just to use active machines.

    A config that strikes me as obvious but doesn’t seem to be popular would be just bistatic where you fire your own transmitter far away from yourself?

    There’s got to be a reason, but it seems like best of both worlds.

    • bob1029 5 minutes ago

      We've already got a really extreme version of this.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNSS_reflectometry

    • eskaytwo 14 minutes ago

      Much more covert, and civilian infrastructure also less likely to be blown up.

    • blittle 33 minutes ago

      Probably more complicated to setup in a hostile environment because you'd need multiple transmitters, which also need to remain stationary, or at least you need to accurately know when they move.

  • quantum_state 3 hours ago

    If one visualizes the electromagnetic field in the environment, including all objects in it and any changes, one would naturally come across many applications in sensing the associated changes in the field. One classic example is the eavesdropping case at Moscow US embassy in the former Soviet Union.

  • smartscience 2 hours ago

    Are there any clever tricks for the data processing involved here, given that the delay is a shift in the time domain and the Doppler effect is a shift in the frequency domain? Maybe involving fractional Fourier transforms, or wavelets?

    • vscode-rest an hour ago

      Lots of clever tricks, all ITAR controlled.

  • wpietri an hour ago

    What's this website? Who put it up?

    Those have always been good questions to ask, but especially these days.

  • aurizon an hour ago

    I wonder if the many Starlink satellites can be used for this? True, the signals are low and are steered, but the nature of steering creates many side lobes that will be useable in this manner. It would be a complex computational task with satellites in motion as well as ground stations transmitting on offset frequencies. I suspect various research/military labs are playing with this?

  • sebasv_ 3 hours ago

    I want this, but I do not have the experience with radio signals to build this myself without more guidance. Is there a DIY proof of concept I could lean on? How much more challenging will this be if you are in an area with overlapping FM signals from 2 transmitters sending the same signal?

    • lormayna 2 hours ago

      This is a very good point to start: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/tag/passive-radar/

      If you have more than one receiver, the main issue is time sincronisation between the receivers.

      Using the two transmitters will complicate things a lot

      • willis936 an hour ago

        For this kind of thing you need to step up to the kraken.

    • quantum_state 3 hours ago

      Would suggest to take a look at Jackson’s book on classical electrodynamics to get some intuition.

  • Chrisszz 2 hours ago

    a website for passive radars, cool xD