In cooperative networks, the source to destination transmission is supported by several intermediate relaying nodes forming a vitual antenna array (VAA). Due to the distributed characteristic of the VAA, different cooperation strategies are available to improve the system performance, e.g., selective relaying (SR) and space-time coding (STC). To this end, certain amount of information has to be exchanged between the relays in order to realize the cooperation. Depending on different cooperation strategies, the exchanged information can be SNRs, channel knowledges, or part of the received message at the relay, which are transmitted between the relays and termed as inter-relay cooperation. In practice, inter-relay cooperation experiences also wireless transmissions and suffers from decision errors. Thus, the effects of this imperfect transmission should be considered on the overall system performance.

To carry out this work, basic knowledges in 'CT I+II' and 'Advanced Topics in Digital Communications' are preferred.