A method for compensating group delay variations in a CDMA spread spectrum receiver, comprising: receiving an RF signal; generating an ideal replica signal; filtering the RF signal by one or more filters; obtaining an ideal auto-correlation function (ACF) of the ideal replica signal; distorting the ideal ACF to generate a distorted ACF by a filtering model of the one or more filters; aligning the ideal ACF and the distorted ACF; calculating a set of correction factors based on a ratio of the ideal ACF and the distorted ACF; calculating a cross-correlation signal based on the filtered RF signal and the ideal replica signal; and obtaining a compensated correlation signal by applying the set of correction factors to the cross-correlation signal.