The present invention discloses a method and apparatus for receiving signals, which comprises the followings: receive signals on at least one receiving branch, which comprises at least two reception units, including one data reception unit and one pilot reception unit at least. Said signal refers to a codeword in a transmission codebook; calculate metric value of each codeword in said transmission codebook according to said received signal; obtain the codeword with maximal metric value among all said codewords and the metric value corresponding to this codeword; if this value exceeds threshold value, Determining the codeword corresponding to said maximal metric value; if this value is less than the threshold value, Determining discontinuously-sent DTX. In the present invention, perform joint demodulation of data symbol and pilot symbol to make the demodulation results more reliable; meanwhile; judge whether it is discontinuous transmission based on joint demodulation of data symbol and pilot symbol.