Sequential detection for energy saving and management

With electronic steerable radar the target dwell time and therefore the number of pulses in a beam position may be arbitrarily selected. The application of sequential detection is therefore possible. This basic detection procedure has been well known for a long time, but for radar applications it seems to be neglected. Some aspects of sequential detection are reviewed and discussed. For a required detection performance, given by an expected S/N and the error probabilities for false alarms, /spl alpha/, and for target missing, p, the required transmit energy expressed by the dwell time is considerably lower than with the conventional detection with a fixed sample size test (FST). A coherent test results in further improvements. The mean pulse number depends on the targets actual signal strength and on the noise level, resulting in an adaptation of the dwell time and therefore in an energy management.