Abstract: The disclosure presents a number of reduced complexity architectures for despreading direct sequence spread spectrum communications signals. In a first despreading architecture for a sequence removal unit, received chip-spaced complex samples are negated in accordance with the processed phase of a complex spreading sequence. Furthermore, the in-phase and quadrature phase sample values are switched for each other in accordance with the processed phase. In a second despreading architecture, in a sequence removal unit, received chip-spaced complex samples are processed in the logarithmic domain, with the phase of the complex spreading sequence added to the detected phase, and the resulting complex signal then converted back to Cartesian coordinates. In a third despreading architecture for a correlator, sequence removal and correlation are performed in the logarithmic domain with the amplitudes and phases for the resulting complex signal arithmetically averaged and then converted back to Cartesian coordinates.