Joint optimization of transmit beam-width and time-on-target in sea-search radars

In this work, we study the achievable performance of a sea-search radar when the transmit beam-with is varied so as to trade a lower directional gain for a longer time-on-target and/or a shorter scan duration due to the reduced number of scanned directions. The considered figure of merit is the number of target detections per unit of time, which allows a fair comparison among scanning policies with different duration, under a constraint on the average number of false alarms per unit of time from the monitored area and on the maximum time-on-target. Examples are provided to show the possible trade-offs as function of the signal-to-clutter and signal-to-noise ratios