  Physical-layer network coding (PNC) is a promising approach for wireless
networks. It allows nodes to transmit simultaneously. Due to the difficulties
of scheduling simultaneous transmissions, existing works on PNC are based on
simplified medium access control (MAC) protocols, which are not applicable to
general multi-hop wireless networks, to the best of our knowledge. In this
paper, we propose a distributed MAC protocol that supports PNC in multi-hop
wireless networks. The proposed MAC protocol is based on the carrier sense
multiple access (CSMA) strategy and can be regarded as an extension to the IEEE
802.11 MAC protocol. In the proposed protocol, each node collects information
on the queue status of its neighboring nodes. When a node finds that there is
an opportunity for some of its neighbors to perform PNC, it notifies its
corresponding neighboring nodes and initiates the process of packet exchange
using PNC, with the node itself as a relay. During the packet exchange process,
the relay also works as a coordinator which coordinates the transmission of
source nodes. Meanwhile, the proposed protocol is compatible with conventional
network coding and conventional transmission schemes. Simulation results show
that the proposed protocol is advantageous in various scenarios of wireless
applications.
