Systems and methods for providing relay in communications systems are disclosed. The relay may receive signals from user equipments (UEs) transmitting coded signals. The relay may receive turbo coded signals from the UEs. The relay station may encode a network channel for transmission to the base station using a recursive systematic convolutional (“RSC”) code. The use of RSC for the network code enables the base station to form as well a distributed turbo code as one can with the UE coded signals. In this manner the base station may recover the signal estimates for the UE signals with lower error probability when estimates at the relay station include errors due to imperfect reception. The use of the relay station and the RSC network code enables the base station to receive UE signals with lower error probability even when the transmission path from the UE is imperfect.