The invention includes several embodiments for slot assignment in code division multiple access communication systems. Some of the embodiments relate to fixed beams and others relate to adaptive arrays. One embodiment for fixed beams assigns slots by first detecting a beam having the best received quality and selected the best slot from that beam. Another fixed beam embodiment determines the best slot or slots in a number of beams and determines the overall best beam/slot combination. Another fixed beam embodiment uses a modified interference factor. One embodiment for the uplink using adaptive arrays using a spatial analysis stage followed by a transmission power level estimation stage. An overall interference level associated with each slot is determined and a slot having the best overall quality is determined. Another embodiment for the downlink uses the spatial analysis and slot assignment of the uplink for the downlink. Another embodiment for the downlink uses a spatial and transmission power level estimation stages. For adaptive arrays, the slot assignment can be determined whether the pathloss for each user is estimated or not and whether signals from each user are received or not.