Neural network applications in adaptive multiuser detection (MUD) schemes are suggested here in the context of space division multiple access-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing system. In this paper, various neural network (NN) models like feed forward network (FFN), recurrent neural network (RNN) and radial basis function network (RBFN) are adopted for MUD. MUD using NN models outperforms other existing schemes like genetic algorithm--assisted minimum bit error rate (MBER) and minimum mean square error MUDs in terms of BER performance and convergence speed. Among these NN models, the FNN MUD performs efficiently as RNN in full load scenario, where the number of users is equal to number of receiving antennas. In overload scenario, where the number of users is more than the number of receiving antennas, the FNN MUD performs better than RNN MUD. Further, the RBFN MUD provides a significant enhancement in performance over FNN and RNN MUDs under both overload and full load scenarios because of its better classification ability due to Gaussian nonlinearity. Extensive simulation analysis considering Stanford University Interim channel models applied for fixed wireless applications shows improvement in convergence speed and BER performance of the proposed NN-based MUD algorithms. © 2012 Springer-Verlag London Limited.