Exploring the Security Capabilities of Physical Layer Network Coding

In wireless networks, the bandwidth is considered one of the most scarce and valuable resources. The physical layer network coding (PNC) technique encourages strategically picked senders to interfere so that the destination nodes can leverage the network level information to recover the signals. PNC can yield higher capacity than network layer network coding when applied to wireless networks. However, before PNC can be widely deployed so that we can fully capture its advantages, we must have a thorough understanding and evaluation of the safety of the technique. Previous research on physical layer network coding focuses on the separation of the interfered signals [1, 2]. For the network layer coding technique, the research on its security focuses on the prevention of the malicious activities such as pollution attacks [3].