  In this work we focus on the general relay channel. We investigate the
application of estimate-and-forward (EAF) to different scenarios. Specifically,
we consider assignments of the auxiliary random variables that always satisfy
the feasibility constraints. We first consider the multiple relay channel and
obtain an achievable rate without decoding at the relays. We demonstrate the
benefits of this result via an explicit discrete memoryless multiple relay
scenario where multi-relay EAF is superior to multi-relay decode-and-forward
(DAF). We then consider the Gaussian relay channel with coded modulation, where
we show that a three-level quantization outperforms the Gaussian quantization
commonly used to evaluate the achievable rates in this scenario. Finally we
consider the cooperative general broadcast scenario with a multi-step
conference. We apply estimate-and-forward to obtain a general multi-step
achievable rate region. We then give an explicit assignment of the auxiliary
random variables, and use this result to obtain an explicit expression for the
single common message broadcast scenario with a two-step conference.
