Single-Receiver Target Detection and Localization of Space Objects

The goal of space domain awareness is to observe and catalogue the space environment while developing countermeasures towards potential threats. Current state-of-the-art space surveillance networks rely on large arrays and sensor fusion among multiple radar, laser, and telescope modalities. However, the established catalogues of tracked space objects account for only 4% of potentially dangerous debris. Recognizing the need for bolstering awareness capabilities, this work proposes a cost-effective processing method for space target detection and localization via self-mixing processing within a forward-scatter bistatic radar. When the direct and reflected signals are incident upon a single node, a target can be detected by the absence of frequency information and the reduction of signal power. Doppler and time delay can be extracted from the received signal through self-mixing processing. This information, paired with knowledge of the angle of arrival and baseline distance, may be used to localize targets via a binary search minimization.