This paper introduces a novel asynchronous CDMA multi-user detector, the block-based MMSE (B-MMSE) multi-user detector, in which the data stream is segmented into blocks by inserting zero bits and detection takes place block-by-block without compromising the MMSE detection efficiency. The BER performance of the B-MMSE detector is studied and the results are compared with those of the decorrelating detector. It is shown that the B-MMSE detector offers promising detection efficiency at a much lower implementation complexity, which is linear in the product of number of users and block size, than that of the traditional MMSE detector. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.