A method and an apparatus for detecting inter-cell interference in a mobile communication system are provided. A base station receives a reference signal (RS) from a terminal, generate one or more interference candidate RSs, calculate a cross correlation of the one or more interference candidate RSs and the received RS, estimate at least one of a size of a Resource Block (RB) an offset of the RB, a group index (U), and a cyclic shift (CS) by using a preset number of interference candidate RSs in an order of the large cross correlation. The base station further removes an interference signal or performs a direct reduction by using at least one of the estimated RB size, the RB offset, the timing offset, and the group index (U). According to the present disclosure, it is beneficial to mitigate or cancel inter-cell interference problem on an uplink transmission without any assistance of neighbor base stations and/or adjacent cells in a wireless communication system.