[Discuss-gnuradio] SSV-online

[Steve Schear]

One relatively popular feature of sci-fi is the assumption that if ETs did 
visit Earth's surface using physical vehicles they would use some sort of 
stealth technology to hide their craft from discovery.  Such speculative 
fiction is far afield from the hard science and technology of this list but 
my posting the other day about Lockheed's HAA project and passive radar (A 
good reason for an invigorated passive radar project) got me to thinking 
that maybe the search for both might be an interesting project using GnuRadio.

From what I understand most of the passive radar discussion in the list 
have been focused on some type of phased array radar at a single geographic 
location.  For locating stealth craft in the atmosphere (e.g., both HAAs 
and ETs) it seems that a more distributed approach might be better, 
enabling lower cost per sensor location and greater geographic 
coverage.  What I have in mind is something akin to the way lightning 
strikes are monitored in remote or largely uninhabited areas (e.g., 
forests) using VLF.  The passive system could use available high-powered 
terrestrial transmitters as the illuminators or perhaps better yet the HF 
emanations from the ionosphere or HF/VHF signals created by 
meteors. 
http://klickitat.ee.washington.edu/mgmeyer/Articles/morabito+etal-2005.pdf

I suggest the name SETV, or Search for Stealth Vehicles - Online.  Each 
sensor location in SSV would be a connected to the Internet and 
synchronized and phased using a GPS-locked clock.  Each might have 3 
antennas: 2 vertical loops at right angles to provide direction and one 
vertical antenna for overall intensity.  The PC components of the sensors 
will perform distributed computation to digest their own data, portions of 
the collective input, exchange captured/reduced data (perhaps via Bit 
Torrent) and provide a visualization component to make visible SSV sighting 
candidates.

Steve