Systems and methods for detecting potentially active user equipment (UE) in a network are provided. A set of potentially active UEs is detected using an iterative method. In a first iteration UE detection is performed using compressed sensing (CS) based on first pilot sequences to detect a first set of potentially active UEs. Channel estimation is then performed for the first set of potentially active UEs. In subsequent iterations, UE detection is performed using CS to detect another set, typically reduced in size, of potentially active UEs using results of the channel estimation from the previous iteration. Channel estimation is then again performed for the new set of potentially active UEs. After the last iteration, the set of potentially active UEs detected in the last iteration is output as the determined set of potentially active UEs along with channel estimates for the set of potentially active UEs determined in last iteration.