Abstract One of the intents of the ground-based gamma-ray astronomy is to obtain a sky survey in the TeV energy region, and nowadays this target can be reached with giant arrays of telescopes, which however need many pointings due to their small field of view. A different approach is on the basis of GAW, acronym for Gamma Air Watch, an array of three relatively small Cerenkov telescopes which differentiate from the existing and presently planned telescopes for two main features: the adoption of a refractive optics system as light collector with a large field of view capability, and the use of single photoelectron counting as detector working mode. During a first phase, the focal plane detector of the GAW telescopes will be implemented in a reduced configuration to test the sensitivity and to prove the feasibility of the method; then the focal plane will be enlarged to cover a field of view of 24°×24°; pointing along different North-South directions, GAW would reach a survey of 360°×60° region of the sky. In this paper, the GAW expected performance are reported as evaluated in the case of the Calar Alto site, Spain, 2150 m a.s.l., where GAW is planned to be located within 2007. GAW is a collaboration effort of Research Institutes in Italy, Portugal and Spain.
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