Abstract A signal detection scheme was proposed for two-way relaying networks (TWRNs) using distributed differential space-time coding (DDSTC) under imperfect synchronization. Unlike most existing work perfect with synchronization assumed, a relative delay between the signals transmitted from both sources to the relay was considered. Since perfect channel state information (CSI) is difficult to be acquired in fast fading, the scenarios and computation complexity will be increased especially when there appear multiple relays, CSI is assumed unavailable at all nodes. Therefore, the article proposes a differential signal detection scheme based on estimating and cancelling the imperfect synchronization component in the received signal at the two source nodes, followed by a least square (LS) decoder. Simulations, using the Nakagami- m fading channel due to its versatile statistical distribution property, show that the proposed scheme for both source nodes are effective in suppressing the inter-symbol interference (ISI) caused by imperfect synchronization while neither the source nodes nor the relay nodes have any knowledge of CSI.