Multihop multibranch relaying for cooperative DS-CDMA systems

In this paper, we study the performance of a cooperative network composed of K branches with Nk hops in the k-th branch. The study is valid for Direct Sequence Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA) systems in the presence of a frequency selective channel. Our results are valid for any Multipath Intensity Profile (MIP) of the channel: any number of paths, arbitrary delays and average power of path gains. Theoretical and simulation results are provided in different contexts to study the effects of the number of branches, number of hops, path delays and number of paths.