Abstract. Thanks to the immense potential cooperative communications displays, extensive investigations have been directed to examine its performance by means of both analysis and simulation. In this paper1 , an implementation approach has for the first time been pursued to demonstrate the viability of realizing cooperation at the MAC layer in a real environment. The paper further describes the technical challenges encountered, details the corresponding solution proposed, and shares the experience gained. The experimental measurements in a medium size (i.e., 10 stations) testbed are then reported, which not only helps develop a deeper understanding of the protocol behavior, but also confirms that a cooperative MAC protocol delivers superior performance.