On the Capacity Bounds of Large-Scale Wireless Network with Physical-Layer Network Coding under the Generalized Physical Model

Physical-layer network coding (PLNC) is an emerging technique that may substantially improve the throughput capacity. In the literature, most existing studies in PLNC focus on a three-node communication system, in which two source nodes exchange information with the help of a common relay node. In this paper, we study the impact of PLNC in a large-scale random wireless network. Specifically, we address the throughput capacity of a random extended network, in which all nodes are located in a w x w square area, where w = sqrt(n). Our analysis is based on a generalized physical model, in which the transmission rate of PLNC depends on the signal to noise and interference ratio(SINR). To investigate the impact of PLNC on the capacity bounds of networks, we construct a novel wireless highway system to provide connectivity in the network. Our study shows that, PLNC can improve the throughput capacity of wireless network by a certain factor, which is greater than 1, depending on the path loss exponent, and the level of noise.