The present invention provides a system and method for reducing the power consumed by a RAKE receiver. In exemplary embodiments of the present invention, an environment variation estimator is implemented in a CDMA mobile station. The environment variation estimator is connected to the searcher of the RAKE receiver and provides an estimate of the rate at which the mobile station's environment is changing. By providing an estimate of the rate of change of the mobile station's environment, the duty cycle of the searcher can be optimized, thereby reducing the overall power consumed by the receiver. By also providing the estimate to the RAKE fingers, channel tracking can be improved.