In this paper, we analyze and simulate the performance of a cooperative communication system adopting a maximum likelihood (ML) equalizer. In wireless communication systems, cooperative communication schemes employing several relays can be applied for extending the communication coverage. It is assumed that both relays and user terminals can move. Therefore, coverages of two or more relays can overlap each other. If wanted and interfering signals are transmitted through the same channel and there are one terminal in the overlapped region, its performance is degraded due to interference. Hence, we use a ML equalizer for rejecting the effect of interfering signal and enhancing the communication system performance. The cooperative system performance is evaluated in terms of bit error probability. From the simulation results, it is demonstrated that the ML receiver shows good interference cancellation performance although its complexity is high.