An exemplary method is implemented by a radio frequency receiver for synchronizing the recovery of data carried by frames. An indication is generated from error correction of whether the error control coding in the receiver is capable of correcting all the errors induced by the channel within the frame. If the indication declares that all the errors are corrected, then the carrier frequency estimate associated with the error free frame is saved in memory and will be used to initialize the carrier recovery loop at the beginning of the following frames until such frequency estimate is declared unreliable. A new carrier frequency estimate is available at the end of each frame, and if such estimate is proven to be reliable for future use, the current estimate in memory will be overwritten by the new estimate and the freshness of the frequency estimate is extended.