Code synchronization is a critical step for fast and reliable code search in direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DS-SS) system. In this paper, we propose a novel differentially coherent (DC) detection scheme for rapid code acquisition over a fast Rayleigh fading mobile radio channel with frequency offset, and compare the performance with the conventional I-Q noncoherent detection scheme. Numerical results show that the proposed DC scheme outperforms the conventional I-Q noncoherent scheme.