Abstract: The present invention relates to the fast code acquisition methods based on signed-rank statistic. In more detail, it presents novel detectors required for PN (PN) code acquisition in DS/SS system. In accordance with the present invention, first, the LOR (LOR) detector is derived and then the LSR (LSR) and MSR (MSR) detectors using approximate score functions are proposed. It is compared the single-dwell scheme without the verification mode using the proposed LSR and MSR detectors with that using the conventional squared-sum (SS) and modified sign (MS) detectors.