A joint detector that improves the performance of receiving a downlink control channel signal for a near-end mobile terminal in the presence of a stronger control channel signal addressed to a far-end mobile terminal sharing the same OVSF, or channelization, code through the use of orthogonal signature sequences. Depending on the specific embodiment, the joint detector may produce the desired bits for the control signal of interest, or may produce detected bits for all control signals sharing the same OVSF code. The joint detector despreads and combines the received code-multiplexed signal, utilizing knowledge of the cross correlations of the set of signature sequences and time-varying channel coefficients to alleviate performance degradation caused by interference from other signals. In various embodiments, the joint detector may be implemented as a modified decorrelating detector, a modified MMSE detector, a modified LS estimator detector, a successive interference-canceling detector, or a jointly hypothesized detector.