A mid-packet detection technique is provided that detects a packet with periodic repetitions of a fixed duration at a point in time of the packet other than a start-of-packet pattern, e.g., a preamble, associated with the packet. The process performs packet detection without detecting a preamble and does not require carrier frequency recovery, timing recovery (synchronization) or channel estimation. In one embodiment, a doubly differential matched filter autocorrelation of the received signal is computed and used as a metric for packet detection when the preamble is not observed or to complement preamble detection. The metric is compared to a threshold to indicate detection of a packet.