Embodiments of the present invention provide a pilot signal generation method and apparatus, so as to implement sharing of one pilot by multiple UEs when it is ensured that each of the multiple UEs can correctly obtain a data stream, thereby reducing pilot overheads. The method includes: determining a first pilot signal shared by multiple UEs, where the multiple UEs are multiple UEs transmitting data streams on a same time-frequency resource; determining a pilot precoding vector of first UE and a data stream receiving gain of the first UE according to current downlink channel information of the multiple UEs, where the first UE is one of the multiple UEs; and generating, according to the first pilot signal, the data stream receiving gain of the first UE, and the pilot precoding vector of the first UE, a second pilot signal that is to be sent to the first UE.