The invention relates to a method for processing a receiver output signal, as well as to an optical sensor. The first method step relates to storing the course of a receiver output signal. In a second method step, the receiver output signal is scanned in a predetermined time interval Δt. The subsequent scanning step relates to correlating the values obtained during the scanning with a filtering matrix, consisting of a sequence of matrix values, for generating a filtered receiver output signal that consists of a discrete sequence of receiver output signal values. In a final method step, the filtered receiver output signal is evaluated with at least one threshold value for generating an object detection signal.