The advantages of homogeneous combustion in internal combustion engines are well known all over the world. Recent years, porous medium (PM) engine has been proposed as a new type engine based on the technique of combustion in porous medium, which can fulfils all requirements to perform homogeneous combustion. In this paper, working processes of a PM engine are briefly introduced and an ideal thermodynamic model of the PM heat regeneration cycle in PM engine is developed. An expression for the relation between net work output and thermal efficiency is derived for the cycle. In order to evaluate of the cycle, the influences of the expansion ratio, initial temperature and limited temperature on the net work and efficiency are discussed, and the availability terms of the cycle are analyzed. Comparing the PM heat regenerative cycle of the PM engine against Otto cycle and Diesel cycle shows that PM heat regenerative cycle can improve net work Output greatly with little drop of efficiency. The aim of this paper is to predict the thermodynamic performance of PM heat regeneration cycle and provide a guide to further investigations of the PM engine. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.