A novel parameter estimation method of frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) signal is proposed. The observed signal is divided into multiple segments and forms an observed matrix, performing FFT on the observed matrix with different segment lengths to obtain the corresponding spectrum matrix. By analyzing the convergence characteristics of the spectrum matrix, the estimation of the symbol period is realized, on this basis, the symbol‐frequency distribution is obtained and its projected spectrum in Frequency‐Amplitude plane is further obtained to select the candidate frequencies. The matrix composed of multiple single frequency signals is constructed according to the candidate frequencies and multiplied with the observed matrix under the segment length of symbol period, then the number of symbols per hopping duration is estimated according to the matrix multiplication result, so as to realize the estimation of the hopping duration, and finally the real hopping frequencies and hopping sequence can be found out from the candidate frequencies. Simulation results are presented to indicate that the proposed method has good estimation performance especially under the condition of low SNR. © 2023 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.