Detection process
Ship detection by maritime and coastal surveillance radars ? Signals and processing

The detection process consists, for each resolution cell, in choosing between two hypotheses:

• hypothesis H₀: there's only noise and possibly clutter;

• hypothesis H₁: there's a target added to noise and possibly clutter.

Two concepts characterize the detection process:

• knowing that there is no target, falsely declaring "target" is a false alarm. Its probability of occurrence is the Probability of False Alarm (P_FA);

• knowing that there is a target, falsely declaring "no target" is non-detection. Its probability of occurrence is 1 – P_D where P_D is the probability of detection.