a receiver for use in a cdma telecommunications system is disclosed . the receiver includes at least one antenna for receiving signals from a cdma channel , where the received signals include a desired user signal . the receiver also includes combining circuitry , for performing chip waveform filtering and maximal ratio combining , to produce mutually correlated chip estimates of the received signals . the receiver further includes an adaptive separator , for adaptively separating the mutually correlated chip estimates , and a correlator , for despreading the output of the adaptive separator to obtain an estimate for data symbols of the desired user signal . in addition , the receiver further includes estimating circuitry , coupled to the combining circuitry , for estimating a response of the channel , where the combining circuitry utilizes the channel response estimate as a reference .