It’s a beam. Angle and elevation, and distance.
Think of an antenna on top of a tower pointing at individual cars. To minimize interference between channels and allow more connections, the antenna beam-shapes, and adjusts power to the minimum necessary to maintain the channel at the optimized speed, and links channels together to create an aggregate.
“Think of an antenna on top of a tower pointing at individual cars”
But the antenna points to lots of cars.
I’m thinking that radar can’t tell the elevation of a plane and its signal is bounced off of distant objects.