1. A method for estimating a chromatic dispersion of a received optical signal, the method comprising: scanning the received optical signal (R x (f)) through a number (M) of chromatic dispersion compensation filters in a chromatic dispersion filter range (D min. .. D max ) between a first chromatic dispersion value (D min ) and a second chromatic dispersion value (D max ) with a resolution (ΔD) determined by the chromatic dispersion filter range (D min. .. D max ) normalized by the number (M) of chromatic dispersion compensation filters to obtain filtered samples (R x, D (f)) of the received optical signal (R x (f)); and determining a correlation function (C D (τ,B)) indicating an estimate of the chromatic dispersion by correlating the filtered samples (R x, D (f)) of the received optical signal with respect to frequency shifts (τ) over a correlation bandwidth (B), wherein the correlation bandwidth (B), the chromatic dispersion filter range (D min. .. D max ) and the resolution (ΔD) are iteratively adapted according to an optimization criterion.