  We investigate quantum repeater protocols based upon atomic
qubit-entanglement distribution through optical coherent-state communication.
Various measurement schemes for an optical mode entangled with two spatially
separated atomic qubits are considered in order to nonlocally prepare
conditional two-qubit entangled states. In particular, generalized measurements
for unambiguous state discrimination enable one to completely eliminate
spin-flip errors in the resulting qubit states, as they would occur in a
homodyne-based scheme due to the finite overlap of the optical states in phase
space. As a result, by using weaker coherent states, high initial fidelities
can still be achieved for larger repeater spacing, at the expense of lower
entanglement generation rates. In this regime, the coherent-state-based
protocols start resembling single-photon-based repeater schemes.
