An apparatus and method for performing distributed spatial multiplexing and distributed spatial diversity in a multi-hop relay system are provided. In the multi-hop relay system, a transmitter includes an outer coder for performing outer coding on transmission data, an outer interleaver for interleaving data received from the outer coder, an inner coder for dividing data received from the outer interleaver into a plurality of frames and performing inner coding on the divided frames, and a transmitting unit for transmitting hierarchically coded frames received from the inner coder to respective Relay Stations (RSs).