We propose a new scheme for rapid acquisition of PN signals in direct-sequence spread spectrum (DS/SS) systems by estimating the phase of the received PN signal with the use of an auxiliary signal. The auxiliary signal can be generated by a sum of the phase shifted PN signals. The phase of the incoming PN signal is estimated using the properties of cross correlation between the PN signal and the auxiliary signal. True phase alignment is detected using a conventional serial search scheme, where the initial phase of the local PN generators is set to a value obtained by the phase estimator. The performance of the proposed acquisition scheme is analytically evaluated in terms of the mean acquisition time. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme can achieve acquisition at least two times faster than the conventional scheme in the nominal operating condition.