The invention provides a personnel detection and counting system based on a millimeter wave radar, wherein the millimeter wave radar is installed at a set position of a monitoring area, the millimeterwave radar transmits millimeter wave band radio frequency signals to the monitoring area through a multi-transmitting and multi-receiving antenna of the millimeter wave radar and receives echo signals at the same time, the echo signals are subjected to frequency mixing with the transmitted signals and then subjected to down-conversion to obtain beat intermediate frequency signals, and the beat intermediate frequency signals are sampled to obtain an echo sampling sequence. A digital signal processor reads the echo sampling sequence and performs signal processing to obtain a detected point cloud data set. An ARM processor reads the point cloud data set, meanwhile, Kalman filtering tracking is carried out on the point cloud data, continuous observation of states and the number of a pluralityof human body moving targets is achieved, the positions and the number of people in the monitoring area are obtained, and the number of people in the monitoring area is counted. The personnel detection and counting system based on the millimeter wave radar can track at least 20 targets simultaneously, provide the position and speed information of the targets, effectively judge the state of the targets and give early warning in time.