ors that would be used to determine which frequency corresponds to the largest spectral value. Present hardware capabilities appear to preclude that such a receiver could be cost effectively constructed. With the rapid advances being made in the surface acoustic wave (SAW), the charge-coupled device (CCD), and very high-speed digital technologies, however, economic feasi- bility may be only a few years hence. Using one-bit (two-level) quantization (at a sacrifice in reuqired S/N S, it is possible even with today's circuits to construct a processor capable of handling a 10 MHz frequency range. A 100 MHz range is probable by the mid to late 1980s. With such a capability, only a small number of channels is needed to cover the entire SS bandwidth. Clearly, then, the potential is realistic. 1.3 PERFORMANCE AND STRATEGIES ASSESSMENT In this final section, an attempt is made to summarize and reconcile the issues and tradeoffs that have been detailed in the foregoing sections. The reader is again remidned that, due to the large number of variables involved, spe- cific but typical examples are being used as the basis for extrapolating gen- eral conclusions. So as to broaden this basis and hopefully dispel "what if" type questions or uncertainties, some additional parameter and configura- tion conditions are explored. 1.3.1 Communicator Modulation and Intercept Detectors Section 1.2 contained a very detailed examination of intercept detector types from both practical (or attainable) performance (as measured by the SIN required) and implementation (assessed by functional and circuit complex- ity) perspectives. Using a fixed set of system parameters, the relative merits of four well-known detectors (optimum multichannel, full-band filter bank combiner (FB-FBC), partial-band filter bank combiner, wideband energy or Low Probability of Intercept Communications radiometer) were compared, and it was observed that only the minimum channel partial-band filter bank combiner (PB-FBC) and the wideband energy detector have utility. Fur