Systems and techniques are disclosed wherein a gated pilot signal can be acquired faster by checking the neighbor pilot signals of the target pilot signal. A subscriber station may frequency lock onto a wrong pilot burst because a partial correlation exists between the wrong pilot burst and an adjacent pilot burst. Comparing the strength of the target pilot signal with the strength of neighbor pilot signals enables the selection of the strongest pilot signal before the timely process of frequency locking and demodulation are initiated. Grouping pilot signals with the same symbol sequence and a pseudo-random noise increment apart enables quick acquisition of a gated pilot signal.