KerberosSDR: Tracking Aircraft on a Map via Passive Radar and Beamforming Only
KerberosSDR: Tracking Aircraft on a Map via Passive Radar and Beamforming Only (Future Code Demonstration) by RTL-SDR Blog
https://www.rtl-sdr.com/kerberossdr-tracking-aircraft-on-a-map-via-passive-radar-and-beamforming-only-future-code-demonstration/ (sourced and republished from RSS feeds)
If you’ve been following KerberosSDR development (our US$149 4 channel coherent RTL-SDR), then you’ll know that one interesting experiment that you can set up with it is a passive radar. Passive radar makes use of already exiting strong transmitters that broadcast signals such as FM, DAB and HDTV.
With one directional antenna pointing towards the transmitter, and one pointing in the general direction of moving objects like aircraft, it’s possible to detect the transmitted signal being reflected off the aircraft’s body.From the time delay and doppler shift detected in the reflected signal, a simple distance/speed plot showing the aircraft in motion can be created. This previous post shows an example of what information you could potentially collect in a range/speed graph over time. In the past we’ve also used passive radar to detect vehicles and measure how much traffic is in a neighbourhood.
However, with two antennas we can only get the detected object’s range and distance information. If we use four antennas (one pointing towards the transmitter, and three pointing in the direction of objects), it is possible to use beam forming techniques combined to obtain an estimated map coordinate of the object…