A method for performing a radio link timing estimation for synchronization to a wireless communications channel such as an uplink channel in a 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in a mobile wireless device or wireless network base station is provided. A channel frequency response estimate from a received reference signal comprising multiple non-coherent Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) symbols is obtained. A frequency response covariance matrix from the channel frequency response estimate is then generated. Timing offsets of the received reference signal using covariance matrix and timing offset estimation algorithms are then estimated.