Interference is usually viewed as an obstacle to communication in wireless
networks. This paper proposes a new strategy, compute-and-forward, that
exploits interference to obtain significantly higher rates between users in a
network. The key idea is that relays should decode linear functions of
transmitted messages according to their observed channel coefficients rather
than ignoring the interference as noise. After decoding these linear equations,
the relays simply send them towards the destinations, which given enough
equations, can recover their desired messages. The underlying codes are based
on nested lattices whose algebraic structure ensures that integer combinations
of codewords can be decoded reliably. Encoders map messages from a finite field
to a lattice and decoders recover equations of lattice points which are then
mapped back to equations over the finite field. This scheme is applicable even
if the transmitters lack channel state information.