A demodulator such as a Fast Hadamard Transform (FHT) based demodulator is used to demodulate all channels in a code space with code length equal to the data channel code. Since the codes for overhead control channels are usually longer, the control channel data is only partially uncovered. Once the necessary further processing is performed and the information to fully uncover the control channels is available, the control channel data is fully demodulated. By only processing one partially uncovered secondary control channel, the present invention reduces the implementation complexity. A hardware implementation of the above method, requires fewer data processing operations, and reduces data processing delays, resulting in lower power consumption.