A system and method is provided for detecting emitter signals and for determining a scan strategy for a receiver system that receives such emitter signals. A rule-based system is provided for determining how emitters should be detected by a detection system. Rules may be used to prioritize certain emitters with respect to other emitters. The rules may also specify parameters for emitter modes, such as probability of intercept, turn-on range, detect-by range, tolerance, tolerance direction, scan periods, and other parameters. The rules may be used to compute the revisit time for the receiver. Multiple sets of rules may be created and a scan strategy may be computed based upon the selected rule set.