Enhanced One-Bit Passive Radar Detection with Dual-Use of Pilot and Data Signals

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are crucial carriers in the low-altitude economy, and with large-scale applications, ensuring airspace order is becoming increasingly important. Active radar, which occupies significant spectrum resources, is unsuitable for urban deployment, making passive radar the primary solution for low-altitude detection. However, existing radar systems that rely on high-precision quantization face high storage and computational demands in large-scale monitoring. Furthermore, traditional technologies often treat communication signals as completely unknown for target detection, neglecting the potential of prior-known communication information, such as the waveform of pilot signals. To address these issues, this paper proposes a one-bit passive radar target detection method with dual-use of pilot and data signals. The method enhances target detection accuracy by leveraging the information of these signals and reduces system complexity through one-bit quantization. Additionally, we analyze the asymptotic performance of the proposed detector under both null and alternative hypotheses in low SNR conditions. Finally, simulation results validate the accuracy of our theoretical analysis and demonstrate the superiority of the proposed detector.