AbstractAdaptive detection in code division multiple access (CDMA) systems aims the reduction of interference in order to allow capacity increase. Spatial processing and multiple access interference (MAI) equalization are two important techniques that have been used separately in adaptive detection for CDMA. The first contribution of this paper is die proposal and performance assessment of a detector that operates simultaneously as a spatial processor and MAI equalizer. Its minimum mean square error performance in a multiple cell CDMA system is addressed and compared with die two existing techniques. A blind adaptive implementation of a similar concept is a second proposition of the paper. Its performance is assessed in terms of wrong capture probability and compared with two other existing techniques, based on constant modulus (CM) or decision‐directed (DD) algorithms. Simulation results show that the first combined scheme performs better than the separated existing techniques, while the proposed blind approach also overcomes limitations of CM and DD‐based solutions.