Contents I. Introduction
It is well known that the detectability of a target is directly related to the amount of radar energy on the target. Traditionally, surveillance radars spread their energy over the coverage volume in some desirable shape and the detectability of the target follows directly as a consequence. A range-azimuth-elevation cell return is compared against a threshold and a detection decision is made. Once this is done, the information for that cell is discarded and other cells are considered. It is clearly wasteful to discard this data which still may contain target returns even if no detection was declared. A method of making use of this information (weak signal which moves from a test cell to others) is needed. There is an assumption here for the traditional radar that the target remains in the cell for the duration of the energy dwell or integration period. If a target moves from one cell to another during the integration period, reduced detectability results.
