A method of operating a relay station is provided. The method includes: receiving a beacon signal transmitted by a user equipment; measuring the beacon signal and transmitting a measurement result to a base station; and receiving routing information for the user equipment determined based on the measurement result, wherein the routing information indicates whether the user equipment communicates with the base station via the relay station or communicates with the base station directly. Accordingly, data can be transmitted through a proper path according to a channel state between the user equipment and the base station or the relay station in a wireless communication system employing the relay station, and thus cooperative transmission can be easily achieved between the base station and the relay station, which results in increase of efficiency of using radio resources.