Abstract: In order to obtain shock-wave coming from a supersonic target, and then to identify and locate the target, a detector based on shocks from supersonic targets is designed using time-frequency distribution. The main feature of time-frequency domain is extracted by the principal component analysis (PCA) method. A simple judgment principle is proposed and the target detection problem in noise surroundings is solved. Simulation analysis was carried out using outdoor detection data. The results showed that the approach is feasible and effective especially for short-time signal detection.