The invention discloses an adaptive communication method of a relay distributed link. The method comprises the following steps of: (1) acquiring channel quality information CQI2 of a relay-station-to-terminal link through pilot strength measurement and feeding the channel quality information CQI2 back to a relay station by a terminal and forwarding the channel quality information CQI2 to a base station by the relay station; (2) acquiring channel quality information CQI1 of a base-station-to-relay-station link according to the pilot strength measurement and feeding the channel quality information CQI1 back to the base station by the relay station; (3) selecting from a modulating and coding mode MCS1 of the base-station-to-relay-station link and a modulating and coding mode MCS2 of the relay-station-to-terminal link through the CQI1 and the CQI2 and informing the relay station of the MCS1 through a downlink signaling by the base station; and (4) deciding a modulating and coding mode MCS3 of the relay-station-to-terminal link according to channel quality information CQI3 of the relay-station-to-terminal link and the MCS1 by the relay station, wherein the channel quality information CQI3 of the relay-station-to-terminal link is fed back by the terminal, and the MCS1 is confirmed by the base station. The invention avoids the problem of inaccurate modulating and coding mode selection to a certain extent due to great signaling expenses and great feedback time delay, thereby ensuring the accuracy of the AMC (Adaptive Modulation and Coding) operation.