A method of communication comprising determining whether to use distributing coding between a source (S), relay (R) and destination (D), based on a predetermined transmission rate; if the determination is positive, determining a forward error correction scheme using distributed Alamouti space-time coding, wherein the scheme is determined based on the predetermined transmission rate, a channel signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and a network topology; relaying coded data from the S to the D using the determined forward error correction.