A multistatic radar system contains multiple spatially diverse monostatic radar or bistatic radar components with a shared area of coverage. An important distinction of systems based on these individual radar geometries is the added requirement for some level of data fusion to take place between component parts. The spatial diversity afforded by multistatic systems allows different aspects of a target to be viewed simultaneously. The potential for information gain can give rise to a number of advantages over conventional systems.
Multistatic radar is often referred to as "multisite" or "netted" radar and is comparable with the idea of macrodiversity in communications. A further subset of multistatic radar with roots in communications is that of MIMO radar.