A method, an apparatus, a computer program product, and other embodiments are provided, which involve receiving a signal on a communications channel, correlating the received signal and a reference signal, and determining, on the basis of a result of the correlation, whether the reference signal can be employed on the communications channel. Additional aspects may provide improvements so that a simultaneous use of reference signals on the same communications channel may be detected. Further aspects may enable the performance of channel estimations on the basis of reference signals to be kept high even in networks where the distance between neighboring base stations employing the same reference signal is short and/or if the number of available reference signals is limited.