Experiment demonstration of micro-Doppler detection of rotor blades with passive coherent location based on digital video broadcast

We propose a realtime passive coherent location (PCL) system based on digital video broadcast (DVB) for the detection of the micro-Doppler (m-D) signature induced by the blades of a helicopter. In this paper, the detailed demonstration of the hardware system, signal processing and field experiment is presented. The m-D parameters of the model helicopter in the experiment are accurately estimated by means of cross ambiguity function (CAF). This paper contributes additional experimental m-D data and analysis, and the effectiveness of micro-motion detection by PCL system is well proved. The attractive merits of DVB based PCL make it more feasible to be widely deployed in urban environment for homeland security purpose. The present work is the first reported realtime system of DVB based PCL for the m-D detecting purpose.