The embodiments of the present invention relate to the general area of wireless communication systems and, in particular, to channel estimation for joint detection of data signals in TD-SCDMA systems. While time slots and spreading codes separate the users in a TD-SCDMA system, multiple access interference affects all its users. To deal with this problem detection schemes such as joint detection are used, which process all users' signals in parallel and include the interference information from all the users. An important part of the joint detection process is channel estimation and, as such, affects the detection process in different ways. In general, the more accurate the channel estimation is, the better the system performance will be. This invention presents methods and systems for channel estimation of TD-SCDMA systems.