Survey on multistatic radar detection

The purpose of this paper is to determine receiver structures suitable to detect a target, by properly processing a number of distinct radar observations obtained by the diverse sensors. In view of this, optimum receivers are synthesized according to a Neyman-Pearson strategy, and their performances are evaluated in order to assess the effects of the number of diverse sensors, of the number of distinct observations at each sensor and of the values of the signal-to-noise ratios in the diverse paths. It is assumed that the wanted signal is embedded in white Gaussian noise, exhibiting no correlation among the diverse paths. At first attention is devoted to the case of coherent pulse trains, for which previously published results can be directly applied. Then the case of non-coherent pulse trains is considered, for which the extension is not trivial. It is anyway of great practical interest that, under the assumption of low signal-to-noise ratios in the diverse paths, the receiver structure is robust with respect to the fluctuation models usually assumed for the target, (namely the four Swerling trains and the non fluctuating incoherent trains).