In this thesis, a new scheme based on the concept of compress-and-forward (CF) technique has been proposed. And expectation maximization (EM) algorithm is utilized to attain the aim of converging to a local optimum solution. According to the characteristic of EM algorithm, destination node would feed back a better decision to the relay node to be the next initial value. After the iteration, relay node would obtain a better detection result which would converge to a local optimum performance. At last the destination node would receive the optimum detection result from each relay and make a final decision. In the new structure, channel estimation can also be made at the relay node by EM algorithm, which is the reason why it is called joint distributed detection and estimation. Simulation shows that the proposed scheme would acquire an iteration gain at both the relay and destination node.