A method of detecting a signal in an input channel of a receiver includes applying each of a plurality of pre-detection bandwidths to an input signal. The method can include deriving, in a cascaded fashion, a plurality of pre-detection bandwidths for the input channel, and determining a temporal and spectral extent of pulsed energy in each of the plurality of pre-detection bandwidths. The derivation of the pre-detection bandwidths for the input channel can be performed by dividing the input channel into a sequence of smaller bandwidth sub-channels, so that the number of sub-channels is determined by how much bandwidth and pulse width range is able to be covered by a single detector.