Summary: Aiming at the data transmission mechanism and data throughput of mobile ad hoc network (MANET), this paper proposes a quadratic permutation polynomials-based sliding window network coding (QPP-SWNC) algorithm in MANETs. According to the QPP theory, this algorithm optimizes the size of the sliding window, carries out network coding operation on the packets entering the sliding window, restores the original data packet, and reduces the encoding/decoding complexity of each sliding window. The performance of the proposed algorithm was studied using NS-2 software. Simulation results show that compared with the typical Block-LDPC and ACODI algorithms, the proposed algorithm can optimize the performance of MANET, such as the encoding overhead, decoding delay and network throughput.