Efficient beam scanning, energy allocation, and time allocation for search and detection

Recently-developed unique and innovative concepts for efficient radar search and detection are reviewed. These results provide answers to the two fundamental search questions: (1) Where should the radar beam point during the next increment of search effort (energy and time)? (2) How much radar effort should be expended during the next increment of search effort? These results provide the most efficient allocation of radar search effort in both space and time which maximizes target detection performance and minimizes radar search energy and time. Typical savings of several dB of radar power-aperture product and/or expected (average) detection time are obtained. These new techniques are practical and can be used in the next generation of radars with agile beams and variable-energy search waveforms. Furthermore, the problem formulation and solution are very general, so these search and detection techniques developed for radar can also be applied to other both active (transmitting and receiving) and passive (receive only) electronic sensors: optical, IR, UV, sonar, seismic, passive RF, astronomy, etc.