Statistical Analysis of Clutter for Passive Radar on an Airborne Platform

A statistical analysis of clutter distribution supports the design and informs the performance of radar system. While extensive work on clutter statistics from monostatic radar systems has been performed, statistical analysis of passive bistatic radar clutter is limited. This paper presents the statistical analysis of clutter returns using a passive bistatic radar mounted on an airborne platform with a DVB-T illuminator of opportunity. In particular, the distributions of the data in-phase, quadrature and amplitude are investigated to understand different behaviours of the clutter. The fitting of Rayleigh, Weibull and Lognormal distributions to the clutter amplitude is the main focus of this initial analysis of clutter, collected from the airborne platform.