Embodiments of the present invention provide a network listening method and device, where the method includes: determining, by a first device according to a type of a network listening resource, a time-frequency pattern that is of a first sequence and is corresponding to the network listening resource of this type; and then transmitting the first sequence to a second device by using the time-frequency pattern of the first sequence, so that the second device performs network listening according to the first sequence. The time-frequency pattern of the first sequence determined in this process is a time-frequency pattern obtained by transforming a time-frequency pattern of a base sequence, and a network listening signal obtained therefrom, that is, the time-frequency pattern of the first sequence, is simple, which can achieve a purpose of reducing complexity of generating a network listening signal and computational complexity of parsing a network listening signal.