Bistatic Radar Receiver/Processor

Bistatic radar processing by airborne signals intelligence (SIGINT) and other intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) platforms affords covert, passive exploitation of adversary or own-force radar systems to improve tactical situational awareness and fused intelligence products. Traditionally these bistatic signals have been ignored or unexploited by existing SIGINT platforms. The bistatic signals, however, contain a rich set of radar returns from both targets and cultural and natural features (i.e., clutter) that can be used to improve emitter geolocation as well as provide covert surveillance of enemy aircraft. Exploiting the bistatic signals, however, requires both novel signal processing algorithms and advanced processing architectures that can meet the challenging computing requirements for extracting the information contained in the bistatic returns. In a previous SBIR Phase II.5(e) effort, ISL established feasibility of the bistatic processing concept. From flight-recorded data, we produced geolocation estimates for terrestrial and maritime emitters of opportunity. The accuracy for each emitter was expressed statistically using the result of multiple geolocation solutions. Combining the results from several emitters provided an estimate of the statistical geolocation accuracy as a function of stand-off range. The proposed Phase II program will refine the processing software and port it to the Mission Systems of Navy aircraft.