A method is devised for evaluating and comparing the performance of receivers used in an active sonar application. The basis of comparison is the level of background noise that will just bring the maximum signal excess, after system adjustment, to zero, given a propagation loss. The better system is the one that can withstand the higher level of background noise before the maximum signal excess goes to zero. This method is applied to the polarity‐coincidence correlator and, for comparison, aural detection. It is found that the polarity‐coincidence correlator compares favorably with aural detection.