Passive radar is one of the current research focuses. The implementation of the Chinese standard digital television terrestrial broadcasting (DTTB) creates a new opportunity for passive radar. DTTB system contains single-carrier and multicarrier application modes. In this paper, ambiguity functions of the DTTB signals in the single-carrier and multicarrier application modes are analyzed. Ambiguity function of the DTTB signal contains one main peak and many side peaks. The relative positions and amplitudes of the side peaks are derived and the reasons for the occurrence of the side peaks are obtained. The side peaks identification (SPI) algorithm is proposed for avoiding the false alarms caused by the side peaks. Experimental results show that the SPI algorithm can indentify all the side peaks without the power loss. This research provides the foundation for designing the DTTB based passive radar.