A system and method for synchronizing a receiver of a bit stream to the bit stream include a correlator to remove the PN code modulation and to generate a stream of time sequence values (samples) from the received bits. A plurality of accumulators are included, each accumulator corresponding to an offset in a series of time intervals starting with a first time period. The accumulators add a number of values equal to a number of samples in a bit period. The values added by each accumulator is a set of values starting with the value at the offset corresponding to the accumulator. A plurality of magnitude calculators receives a sum from the corresponding accumulator and calculates a magnitude. A plurality of non-coherent summers are then used to add the magnitudes for each offset in each bit period for all of the received bits. The total sum in each non-coherent summer is then analyzed to find the highest value, such that the offset corresponding to the non-coherent summer with the highest value represents the location of the bit transition in the bit period.