A MIMO receiver for processing N data streams received by N antennas for a direct-sequence spread-spectrum wireless communication system comprising a linear equalizer operating at the chip level for performing linear chip level Inter-Chip Interference and all Inter-Stream Interference cancellation of said N data streams, and generating N output chip level data streams; de-spreading blocks for separately de-spreading the N outputs of the linear equalizer; and a non linear detector for performing spatial equalization and multi-stream detection.