The Development of Non-coherent Passive Radar Techniques for Space Situational Awareness with the Murchison Widefield Array

Abstract

The number of active and non active satellites in Earth orbit has dramatically increased in recent decades, requiring the development of novel surveillance techniques to monitor and track them. In this paper, we build upon previous non-coherent passive radar space surveillance demonstrations undertaken using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). We develop the concept of the Dynamic Signal to Noise Ratio Spectrum (DSNRS) in order to isolate signals of interest (reflections of FM transmissions of objects in orbit) and efficiently differentiate them from direct path reception events. We detect and track Alouette-2, ALOS, UKube-1, the International Space Station, and Duchifat-1 in this manner. We also identified out-of-band transmissions from Duchifat-1 and UKube-1 using these techniques, demonstrating the MWA's capability to look for spurious transmissions from satellites. We identify an offset from the locations predicted by the cataloged orbital parameters for some of the satellites, demonstrating the potential of using MWA for satellite catalog maintenance. These results demonstrate the capability of the MWA for Space Situational Awareness and we describe future work in this area.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in PASA. 11 pages, 11 figures and 2 Tables

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Cited by in corpus (7)

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• Establishing the Capabilities of the Murchison Widefield Array as a Passive Radar for the Surveillance of Space
• Improved Sensitivity for Space Domain Awareness Observations with the Murchison Widefield Array
• A Low Frequency Blind Survey of the Low Earth Orbit Environment using Non-Coherent Passive Radar with the Murchison Widefield Array
• Simulations of orbital debris clouds due to breakup events and their characterisation using the Murchison Widefield Array radio telescope