In a receiver of a simulcast multi-carrier CDMA (code division multiple access) communications system, a combined data signal is produced by combining signals representing data received for the plurality of carriers and is multiplied by the complex conjugate of a composite reference signal, representing characteristics of the plurality of carriers, produced by combining signals representing a reference signal received for the plurality of carriers, thereby improving multi-path resolution due to frequency diversity of the reference signal over the multiple carriers of the system. The receiver can be simplified by demodulating the signals of the plurality of carriers in common to produce a demodulated signal which is common to the data and reference signals for the plurality of carriers, the data and reference signals being subsequently separated using their respective orthogonal codes. Data signals can be recovered both with and without the improved multi-path resolution over the multiple carriers, and an optimum selection between them can be made.