A wavelet packet function based multiple access (WPMA) system is developed in this paper to maximize capacity and improve receiver performance over frequency selective multipath fading channels. To design an efficient receiver that mitigates residual multiple access interference (MAI) and intersymbol interference, while improving received signal-to-interference and noise ratio (SINR) simultaneously on the uplink, a multichannel decision feedback equalizer (DFE) following a wavelet packet function based RAKE receiver is proposed. Simulation results show that, over GSM TU channels the developed receiver performs quite well if the power of each user is perfectly controlled or the space diversity combining (SDC) technique is applied.