Receiver for use in a cooperative broadcast multi-hop network

A receiver comprising one or more hardware-based processors and memory comprising processor-executable instructions to execute:

• a multi-user RAKE receiver configured to:
• receive a plurality of transmissions directly received from a plurality of nodes of a cooperative broadcast multi-hop network and multipath components of transmissions received from the plurality of nodes, wherein each of the transmissions comprises a direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DSSS) signal having a DSSS waveform transmitted over a unique channel, the multi-user RAKE receiver comprising:
• a correlator block for each of the plurality of nodes, wherein each correlator block performs correlation for that particular node to determine channel-multipath correlations and generates one or more candidate fingers for that particular node;
• and
• a finger selection module configured to receive the candidate fingers output from each correlator block and select a subset of the candidate fingers having sufficient correlation for further processing;
• a combiner module configured to:
• combine aligned symbols for the subset of candidate fingers on a per channel basis to generate a soft decision across each of a plurality of channels, and combine the soft decisions into a joint soft decision that comprises a coherently constructed signal that includes a coherently combined vector of chips of information from each of the plurality of channels;
• and
• a data despreader module configured to:
• receive the joint soft decision and despread the chips of information from each of the plurality of channels to generate demodulated data symbols that are converted into data soft-decision bits.