'Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)'
Abstract
This paper aims at a critical review of the signal processing scheme used in WiFi-based passive radar in order to limit its complexity and enhance its suitability for short range civilian applications. To this purpose the exploitation of a reciprocal filtering strategy is investigated as an alternative to conventional matched filtering at the range compression stage. Along with the well-known advantage of a remarkable sidelobes control capability for the resulting range-Doppler response, the use of a reciprocal filter is shown to provide additional benefits for the specific sensor subject of this study. Specifically, it allows to streamline the disturbance cancellation stage and to implement a unified signal processing architecture which is capable to handle the different modulation schemes typically adopted in WiFi transmissions. Appropriate adjustments are also proposed to the theoretical reciprocal filter in order to cope with the inherent loss in term of signal-to-noise power ratio. The effectiveness of the revised signal processing scheme encompassing the reciprocal filtering strategy is proved against both simulated and experimental datasets