The embodiments provide a multi-stage phase estimation method and apparatus. The apparatus is a multi-stage phase estimation configuration. Each stage of the phase estimation configuration includes metric computation modules. Each of the metric computation modules computing a distance metric and search phase angles according to an input signal and an initial search phase angle or a search phase angle of the former stage phase estimation configuration. The number of the metric computation modules is equal to that of the search phase angles of this stage. A selection module selects the search phase angle corresponding to the minimal distance metric as the phase estimation result output of this stage according to the computation results of all metric computation modules. The average time window length of the former stage phase estimation configuration is larger than that of the subsequent stage phase estimation configuration.