A method and device for estimating a target chip index value in a code-division multiple access receiver. The receiver receives signals from a transmitter that uses a plurality of transmitted chips for data transmission through a plurality of multipath channels. As each channel is expressible as a channel impulse response at a given instant in time, the impulse response can be sampled and the samples indexed by a plurality of delay sample indices. The target chip index value can be determined based on the first moment of the delay sample indices over an impulse response.