The present invention comprises a system and method for a GSM receiver to perform channel estimation under the assumption that the analog-to-digital (A/D) converter is free-running. A search process is employed, whereby the known GSM training signal is sampled with a plurality of phases which vary incrementally from zero to a full symbol period. For each phase a sample set (of the training signal) is generated. Furthermore, each sample set is used, together with the received samples, in a cross-correlation procedure to obtain a candidate impulse response vector for the transmission channel. Thus a plurality of candidate impulse response vectors are produced, one of which will be selected to be the optimal representative for the transmission channel. The optimal impulse response vector is selected as follows. Each impulse response vector is convolved with the corresponding sample set, thus producing an estimated output vector. The estimated output vectors are compared with the vector of received samples (from the free-running A/D converter), and the estimated output vector which is closest in the Euclidean (square-norm) sense designates the impulse response vector which is optimal.