A wireless receiver including a front end circuit, an adaptive threshold circuit, and a correlator. The front end circuit converts a wireless signal into a series of digital symbols. The adaptive threshold circuit provides an adaptive correlation threshold that is adapted based on a sync word. The correlator correlates the digital symbols with the sync word using the adaptive correlation threshold. The adaptive correlation threshold may be based on amplitude attenuation of the digital symbols that correspond to transitions of the sync word. The adaptive threshold circuit may be a lookup table that stores different threshold values each corresponding to one of multiple different sync words. Alternatively, the adaptive threshold circuit may be implemented as an evaluation circuit that determines the adaptive correlation threshold based on expected amplitude attenuation of the digital symbols that correspond to transitions of the sync word.