Embodiments of this application disclose a pilot signal sending and receiving method and apparatus, wherein the pilot signal sending method includes: establishing a first correspondence between a carrier identifier and a pilot pattern of a first type of pilot signal; establishing a second correspondence between a carrier identifier and a resource block set; acquiring a target carrier identifier of a target carrier; determining a location of a target resource block set corresponding to the target carrier identifier; determining a target pilot pattern that is of a first type of pilot signal and that corresponds to the target carrier identifier; mapping, according to the target pilot pattern, the first type of pilot signal to each resource block in the target resource block set on the target carrier. In this method, mapping is performed on a pilot signal only in a resource block set, which may reduce pilot redundancy and overheads.