Detection rate optimization in surveillance radars with two-step sequential detection

We consider a surveillance radar that requests a second look of a cell under inspection whenever a reliable decision cannot be made after the first observation. The available degrees of freedom are exploited to maximize the detection rate, defined as the average number of detections from a target per unit of time, under a constraint on the false alarm rate, which is the average number of false alarms per unit of time from the inspected area. A performance comparison with fixed-sample-size detection and alert-and-confirm detection is provided.