Embodiments of the present invention provide a reference signal detection method and receiving method, user equipment, and a base station. The user equipment includes: a determining unit, configured to determine configuration information of a reference signal, where the configuration information includes information about a first candidate time-frequency resource and information about a second candidate time-frequency resource, where the first candidate time-frequency resource includes a first partial time-frequency resource and a second partial time-frequency resource; the second candidate time-frequency resource includes a third partial time-frequency resource and a fourth partial time-frequency resource; and the first partial resource, the second partial resource, the third partial resource, and the fourth partial resource do not overlap one another; and a detection unit, configured to detect the reference signal according to the configuration information. According to the embodiments of the present invention, cell discovery and measurement performance can be improved.