A configurable cellular terminal engine (CTE) in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of this invention is configurable by an external agent (e.g., microcontroller, DSP, or state machine) to suit the particular requirements of different spread spectrum systems. In an exemplary embodiment, the CTE comprises on a chipset a modem unit and a channel codec unit. The modem unit has a front end unit for coupling to an antenna; a matched filter searchers unit coupled at least to the front end unit; a searchers unit coupled to at least the front end unit; a finger processing unit coupled to the front end unit; a parameter estimation processor unit coupled to at least the finger processing unit and the searchers unit; and a transmitter unit. The channel codec unit has a channel decoder unit coupled at least to the finger processing unit; and a channel encoder coupled at least to the transmitter unit.