Methods, protocols and systems for communicating in a multi-hop wireless mesh network may use cooperative diversity transmission techniques in combination with mesh routing. In one example, a cooperation layer may be integrated with MAC and/or PHY layers and generate a plurality of virtual interfaces for use by a mesh routing layer. The plurality of virtual interfaces may include a first interface type defining potential mesh nodes that can be reached without using cooperative diversity transmission techniques, a second interface type defining potential mesh nodes that can be reached by cooperatively transmitting with one neighbor node, and a third interface type defining potential mesh nodes that can be reached by cooperatively transmitting with combinations of two or more neighbor nodes. The mesh routing layer may select which interface to use in determining multi-hop routing based on a range and/or cost metric of a particular virtual interface.