This thesis investigates the use of cooperative communications in the context of ad hoc IEEE 802.11b to combat radio signal degradations due to slow fading. The performance gain of both an existing cooperative protocol and the one proposed in the paper is discussed. It is quantitatively shown how much the two cooperative protocols increase throughput, lower delivery latency, and extend transmission span, when compared to the conventional IEEE 802.11b protocol. These features may help improve connectivity and network performance in ad hoc applications, where nodes' relative locations are difficult to control and predict.