Parallel interference cancellation for CDMA applications

The present invention provides a method of decoding a spread spectrum composite signal, the composite signal comprising plural user signals that have been spread with plural respective codes, wherein each coded signal is despread, averaged to produce a signal value, analyzed to produce a tentative decision, respread, summed with other respread signals to produce combined interference signals, the method comprising scaling the combined interference signals with a weighting factor to produce a scaled combined interference signal, scaling the composite signal with the weighting factor to produce a scaled composite signal, scaling the signal value by the complement of the weighting factor to produce a leakage signal, combining the scaled composite signal, the scaled combined interference signal and the leakage signal to produce an estimate of a respective user signal.