Jointly encoding signals from multiple sources, by cooperating stations, with retransmission of those jointly encoded signals to receivers. A cooperating station decodes signals from multiple sources, jointly encodes them to form a joint protection signal responsive to the decoded signals from those multiple sources, simultaneously responsive to more than one of them. The cooperating station sends the protection signal to one or more receivers, which use that joint protection signal to decode those signals from multiple sources. More than one cooperating stations can each perform similar tasks. Each of those cooperating stations performs those tasks using a distinct protection code, such as a similar error-correcting code, but with distinct parameters. The cooperative stations use an error-correcting block code, including decoding data and parity values of the multiple signals; computing the error-correcting block code; and sending a differing portion of the computed block code.