A system is disclosed for use in a wireless communication system to provide an estimated pilot signal. The system includes a receiver and a front-end processing and despreading component in electronic communication with the receiver for despreading a CDMA signal. A pilot estimation component is in electronic communication with the front-end processing and despreading component for estimating an original pilot signal using a Kalman filter to produce a pilot estimate. A demodulation component is in electronic communication with the pilot estimation component and the front-end processing and despreading component for providing demodulated data symbols. The Kalman filter is configured by an offline system identification process that calculates parameters using a prediction error method and a Gauss-Newton algorithm and generates state estimates using the Kalman filter. The calculating and generating are iteratively performed to train the Kalman filter for real-time operation.