Random Access With Physical-Layer Network Coding

We consider a physical-layer network coding strategy for the random-access channel, based on compute-and-forward. When packets collide, it is possible to reliably recover a linear combination of the packets at the receiver. Over many rounds of transmission, the receiver can thus obtain many linear combinations and eventually recover all original packets. This is by contrast to slotted ALOHA where packet collisions lead to complete erasures. The strategy is shown to be significantly superior to the best known strategies, including multipacket reception.