Definition and analysis of Homeland Security Systems based on Software Defined Passive Radars

The Homeland Security concept is mainly based on a new model of cooperation and interconnection between different infrastructures. A general scheme of a Homeland Security System (HLS) is based on an heterogeneous architecture able to share information between different nodes consisting of people, devices, information and services. A set of nodes interacts using a communication network to optimise the use of resources. A modern surveillance system should respect the requirements of scalability, modularity and interoperability. In detail, the single radar sensor is the building block of a HLS system. This thesis focuses on a radar that meets the requirements of modularity and scalability combining the Software Defined Radio approach with Passive Radar Systems. For this purpose, the Universal Software Radio Peripheral and the opensource GNURadio Software-defined Radio Toolkit is used. Preliminary measurements have shown that USRP is able to receive UMTS and DVB-T signals by using the same hardware configured via software. The radar functionality has been tested on different scenario as urban, costal and aerial. Experimental results obtained with low-cost equipment have proven the feasibility of a DVB-T/UMTS based passive radar system.