Abstract: By embracing the wireless interference, physical-layer network coding significantly enhances the throughput performance of multi-hop wireless networks. Current researches on this technology only consider the scenarios in which two users and power control are involved. In this paper we expand its application circumstance from chain network to general network, present the physical-layer network coding scheme based on the MAP mapping algorithm and analyze its performance. Results show that physical-layer network coding can be applied to the general network. By maintaining the same transmitting energy, the best performance is achieved when both nodes’ energies are equal. The number of the participant nodes and channel state are also the factors that influence the performance of physical-layer network coding.

Key words: network coding, physical layer, wireless network, MAP mapping algorithm