X-Band Bistatic Doppler Characterization for Space Domain Awareness

In this work, we present novel X-band data acquisition and bistatic Doppler characterization capabilities for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) Long Baseline Bistatic Radar (LBBR) experimental testbed. By utilizing the Haystack Ultra-Wideband Satellite Imaging Radar (HUSIR) at MIT Lincoln Laboratory as the illuminating radar and the Goonhilly-3 antenna at Goonhilly Earth Station (GES) as the receiving antenna, we achieve finer range and Doppler characterization along a viewing geometry that is similar to our other sensors. The authors performed novel X-band bistatic Doppler characterization experiments on a real on-orbit tumbling target, the Atlas 5 Centaur Rocket Body, a second stage booster in a Middle Earth Orbit (MEO) orbit. Specialized Doppler processing results formed using the range Doppler time tensor technique enables high-fidelity rotation period estimation, tumble angle estimation, and determination of minimum target size. X-band results obtained across Principal Polarization (PP) and Orthogonal Polarization (OP) channels provided consistent rotational motion descriptions of the tumbling object and all verified the uniform rotation assumption.