<p>This study examines the target detection problem in passive bistatic radar. It is well-known that traditional target detection methods are designed under the assumption that the reference signal is ideally free of target echoes. However, this is problematic for passive bistatic radar as the reference channel has often a large main-lobe width and high side-lobe level. As will be shown in this paper, the target echoes contained in the reference channel degrade the target signal to clutter ratio (SCR) and increase the false alarm rate. Therefore, a matched rule for making a distinction between the actual targets and their ghost targets is established, and a clean method for eliminating the redundant target echoes from the reference channel is proposed. Based on simulations it has been shown that as the target echoes are removed from the reference channel, the ghost targets corresponding to this effect disappear after cross-correlation with the surveillance channel.</p>