Methods and apparatus for canceling co-channel interference in a receiving system using spatio-temporal whitening. In some embodiments, a spatio-temporal interference canceling method, and apparatus for carrying out the method are provided which effectively cancel co-channel interference despite frequency offset between the desired signal and the interferer in a TDMA type system. Real and imaginary component values of the total received signal are used for virtual diversity branches, and a vector-valued auto regressive model is used to characterize the interference. In other embodiments, spatio-temporal interference whitening is used to improve timing estimates used for synchronization. The two uses of spatio-temporal whitening can be combined in one receiver. The invention is typically implemented in one or more programmed digital signal processors or application specific integrated circuits (ASICS), embodied in a receiving system.