Embodiments of an enhanced base station and method for communicating through an enhanced distributed antenna system (eDAS) are generally described herein. The eDAS includes geographically-separated antenna nodes and each of the antenna nodes has a plurality of antenna elements. The base station may perform physical-layer baseband processing for each of the antenna nodes at a centralized processing location, and may cause the antenna nodes to transmit reference signals in accordance with a multiplexing scheme to allow user equipment to perform channel estimation for the antenna elements of any one or more of the antenna nodes. The base station may also cause the antenna nodes to transmit signals having synchronization codes to allow the user equipment to synchronize with the antenna elements of any one or more of the antenna nodes. In some embodiments, the base station may communicate with the antenna nodes over a physical-layer interface.