Abstract: The present invention provides a method of improving the performance of a CDMA based wireless network, such as a 3G cellular network for example. Interference cancellation is effectively performed earlier by using the channel request such as a reservation packet from a mobile terminal to estimate interference from that mobile on existing mobile users and interference on the mobile from existing mobile users, by determining the relative transmission timing of the new mobiles channel request compared with the transmission timings of the existing mobiles. The base station determine the cross-correlation between the codes already assigned to the existing users and the code to be allocated to the new user in order to determine an interference measure. This interference can then be cancelled from the new mobile when its data packets are received.