We investigate the problem of detecting gravitational waves from binaries of
nonspinning black holes with masses m = 5--20 Msun, moving on quasicircular
orbits, which are arguably the most promising sources for first-generation
ground-based detectors. We analyze and compare all the currently available
post--Newtonian approximations for the relativistic two-body dynamics; for
these binaries, different approximations predict different waveforms. We then
construct examples of detection template families that embed all the
approximate models, and that could be used to detect the true
gravitational-wave signal (but not to characterize accurately its physical
parameters). We estimate that the fitting factor for our detection families is
>~0.95 (corresponding to an event-rate loss <~15%) and we estimate that the
discretization of the template family, for ~10^4 templates, increases the loss
to <~20%.Comment: 58 pages, 38 EPS figures, final PRD version; small corrections to GW
flux terms as per Blanchet et al., PRD 71, 129902(E)-129904(E) (2005
