The invention relates to an apparatus and a method for estimating a fading frequency of incoming received waves in a receiving station of a radio communication system or radio transmission system. An object of the invention is to estimate a fading frequency efficiently and accurately without substantially complexing the configuration of the system. To this end, the invention provides an apparatus for estimating a fading frequency from a pilot signal in a reception signal, which includes a calculation unit for calculating a magnitude of a complex product of two symbols that are received at different instants, and an estimation unit for estimating a fading frequency according to the calculated magnitude of the complex product.