A method and apparatus for estimating a state parameter in a nonlinear discrete time system are provided. The method for estimating a state parameter has the steps of (a) predicting a state parameter at a current time using an estimated state parameter at a previous time and a system dynamics; and (b) estimating an optimal state parameter at the current time from the state parameter predicted in the step (a) and a system output parameter measured at the current time, using a geometric data fusion method. Since the method and apparatus for estimating a state parameter have an excellent estimation performance particularly when nonlinearity is great or the error in an estimated initial value is big, the method and apparatus solve many problems, which cannot be solved by the conventional extended Kalman filter, and more improve the performance of estimating a state parameter, by analyzing the system characteristic and then appropriately utilizing constraints such as the operation range of the state parameter.