  We introduce measurement-based quantum repeaters, where small-scale
measurement-based quantum processors are used to perform entanglement
purification and entanglement swapping in a long-range quantum communication
protocol. In the scheme, pre-prepared entangled states stored at intermediate
repeater stations are coupled with incoming photons by simple
Bell-measurements, without the need of performing additional quantum gates or
measurements. We show how to construct the required resource states, and how to
minimize their size. We analyze the performance of the scheme under noise and
imperfections, with focus on small-scale implementations involving entangled
states of few qubits. We find measurement-based purification protocols with
significantly improved noise thresholds. Furthermore we show that already
resource states of small size suffice to significantly increase the maximal
communication distance. We also discuss possible advantages of our scheme for
different set-ups.
