Apparatus and method for estimating a frequency shift and a time shift

An apparatus (100) for estimating a frequency shift and a time shift in a CDMA signal based on a CDMA code associated with a CDMA signal, comprising a modulation removal stage (110) for removing a data modulation from the CDMA signal to obtain a modified CDMA signal. The apparatus (100) further comprises a frequency domain transformer (120) for transforming the modified CDMA signal to the frequency domain to obtain a modified CDMA spectrum and a frequency shift detector (130) for detecting a group of candidate frequency shifts based on the modified CDMA spectrum. The apparatus (100) further comprises a processing stage (140) for processing the CDMA signal and a candidate frequency shift to obtain the time shift, when a combination of the CDMA signal, the CDMA code and the candidate frequency shift fulfills an optimization criterion and for selecting the candidate frequency shift as the frequency shift.