A receiver architecture and method recovers data received over an optical fiber channel in the presence of cycle slips. In a first cycle slip recovery architecture, a receiver detects and corrects cycle slips based on pilot symbols inserted in the transmitted data. In a second cycle slip recovery architecture, a coarse cycle slip detection is performed based on pilot symbols and a cycle slip position estimation is then performed based on carrier phase noise. The receiver compensates for cycle slips based on the position estimation.