Abstract: In order to solve the problem that the active sonar detection performance of matched filter is not ideal in strong reverberation background. A method combining pre-whitening and wavelet transform is proposed. Firstly, the reverberation is pre-whitened, and then the reverberation and the echo signals are decomposed into different scale spaces by wavelet transform. The threshold quantization is carried out in the scale space to preserve the useful signal components for data reconstruction. Finally, the reconstructed data are processed by the matched filter, so that the reverberation is effectively suppressed and the detection performance is significantly improved. Simulation and experimental data processing results verify the effectiveness of this method, and the ratio of signal-to-reverberation can be improved by 3 dB.