Passive radar source localisation based on PSAAA using single small size aircraft

This study considers the problem of how to accurately and passively localise the hostile radar's position based on only one small‐size aircraft. Inspired by synthetic aperture sonar, synthetic aperture radar and multi‐static passive radar, a similar concept of passive synthetic aperture antenna array (PSAAA) is introduced in this study. The same single receiver carried by one small aircraft is virtually taken as PSAAA element at different flight track positions at multiple different moments. Taking full advantage of aircraft space movement and radar antenna circular rotation, an effective method is proposed to estimate the virtual time differences of arrival (VTDOAs). The VTDOAs are the passive localisation information defined as the time differences of the radar pulse transmission from the radar position to different virtual receivers. Based on the VTDOAs estimation, the authors propose a construction method for the binary quadratic localisation equation group, and then a closed‐form solution algorithm is given for passive radar position estimation. Simulations corroborate the performance of the proposed methods.