— A nonlinear beamforming aided detector is proposed for multiple-antenna assisted quadrature phase shift keying systems. By exploiting the inherent symmetry of the optimal Bayesian detection solution, a symmetric radial basis function (SRBF) detector is developed which is capable of approaching the optimal Bayesian performance using channel-impaired training data. In the uplink case, adaptive nonlinear beamforming can be implemented effectively by estimating the channel matrix based on the least squares channel estimate. Adaptive implementation of nonlinear beamforming in the downlink case by contrast is much more challenging, and we adopt a cluster-variation enhanced clustering algorithm to directly identify the SRBF centre vectors required for realising the optimal Bayesian detector.