A method for synchronizing a receiver to a stream of transmitted symbols that includes a known synchronization word. The method includes receiving a signal in which the symbols, including the synchronization word, are encoded by frequency shift keying. The signal is sampled and digitized to generate a sequence of input samples. For each of the input samples, a phase difference is determined relative to a preceding input sample in the sequence, thereby generating a sequence of differential samples corresponding respectively to the input samples. The differential samples are then matched to the synchronization word.