Radar system for continuous tracking of multiple objects

A method of operating a radar system comprising:

• transmitting on a non-scanning antenna beam that illuminates the entire search space;
• subdividing the search space into a specified number of sectors, each of which is covered by a set of non-scanning receive antenna beams;
• receiving returns from all targets within each designated sector covered by its set of antenna beams;
• processing the returns in each receiver to realize range resolution of the transmit waveform;
• processing returns in each receiver coherently to realize Doppler resolution within a specified processing interval;
• computing the magnitude or power in each range/Doppler resolution cell in each receiver;
• combining noncoherently those receiver outputs that cover or overlap in each sector;
• detecting the presence of a target or targets in the noncoherently combined receiver outputs;
• tracking each target in range and Doppler in consecutive processing intervals;
• motion compensating the original coherent radar data associated with each target using the range-Doppler track of that target;
• processing the motion-compensated coherent data associated with each target to measure both the azimuth and elevation angles of that target;
• repeating the processing on all targets in all sectors;
• where target detection, target acquisition, target tracking, and target analysis are being performed on the same data in each sector.