We address the maximum link activation problem in wireless networks with new features, namely when the transmitters can perform cooperative transmission, and the receivers are able to perform successive interference cancellation. In this new problem setting, which transmitters should transmit and to whom, as well as the optimal cancellation patterns at the receivers, are strongly intertwined. We present contributions along three lines. First, we provide a thorough tractability analysis, proving the NP-hardness as well as identifying tractable cases. Second, for benchmarking purposes, we deploy integer linear programming for achieving global optimum using off-the-shelf optimization methods. Third, to overcome the scalability issue of integer programming, we design a suboptimal but efficient optimization algorithm for the problem in its general form, by embedding maximum-weighted bipartite matching into local search. Numerical results are presented for performance evaluation, to validate the benefit of cooperative transmission and interference cancellation for maximum link activation, and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.