Wireless communication has encouraged the practice of optimizing the performance of wireless networks to achieve higher data rates and network coverage for the end user. Such strategies and methods will be examined to verify their validity and introduce future solutions to the limitations of wireless communication systems. Wireless communications performance is affected by channel fading, path loss, and interference. There are several techniques that can be used to avoid signal degradation. Over short distances, a transmitter-receiver pair is capable of establishing a quality connection. However, relay networks have become a popular strategy for transmitters and receivers that have been separated by large distances or large obstacles in the way. Relays are used to retransmit the signal with or without recoding it. Cooperative communication extends coverage and reduces transmission power using spatial diversity. Distributed coding is a cooperative technique that allows multiple antennas to work together to transmit information. Specifying these different networks can be a difficult task. There are several relay configurations and compromises. The current design process for relay networks is limited to the disadvantages of the wireless channel. Strategies using MIMO (multiple input-multiple output) overcome many of the problems inherent in wireless transmission and have become very popular. The research will expose the benefits of relay systems, MIMO and other selected strategies that optimize performance in a wireless network. Wireless communication has revolutionized our society. It provides access to communication that is impossible to implement with the use of wires. It helps ... middle of paper ... and the relays can cooperate to transmit to the receiver. The advantage being that the best approximation of the signal will be selected by the receiver. More information can be transmitted if the relays receive and transmit on different channels or in duplex. Other relay schemes seek to improve network coverage by sending a message through multiple nodes. The design process goes even further by selecting different modes of relay operation. Since signal-to-noise ratio is still the current figure of merit for most wireless communication systems, AAF and DAF protocols are assigned to nodes to maintain a quality signal. The variety of features of a decode and transfer relay typically far exceeds that of the AAF relay, because the DAF operates at a higher level of signal processing. Finally, the use of multiple antennas has grown rapidly over the last decade.