Cable tension is a critical indicator for evaluating the load-bearing capacity and service life of cable structures. Among various non-destructive testing methods, ultrasonic guided wave-based tension measurement-rooted in the acoustoelastic effect-has shown significant promise. This technique not only enables defect detection but also offers accurate assessment of the cable′s overall stress state. However, in practical applications, the complex waveform characteristics of guided waves-caused by the cable′s structural intricaciespose challenges in extracting precise acoustic time-of-flight feature points. To address this problem, this study proposes a novel cable tension measurement method based on multi-resolution singular value decomposition (MRSVD). The approach constructs a new binary recursive matrix using a dichotomous recursion strategy, integrated with MRSVD. A sliding window technique is employed to segment the signal, enabling extraction of a newly defined echo localization feature-the singular correlation value (SCV). This metric effectively quantifies the correlation between the segmented signal and its corresponding echo. By constructing the SCV spectrum, the method achieves high-precision localization of the echo arrival time at the cable end. To validate the proposed approach, guided wave experiments were conducted on 5~55 parallel steel wire cables with anchor heads under varying tension conditions. The results demonstrate that the method accurately identifies echo signals at the cable anchorage zone, enabling calculation of guided wave velocity and corresponding cable tension. The relative error between the measured and actual cable tension values remains within 10%. A comparative analysis with the conventional cross-correlation method highlights the superior performance of the proposed technique in both measurement accuracy and noise resistance, offering a novel and effective technical solution for cable tension evaluation.