M-Cr-Al-Y (M=Ni and/or Co) coatings with the good comprehensive property among anti-oxidation, anti-corrosion and mechanical properties have been widely used for the protection for the gas turbine components. However, after a long-term thermal exposure to high temperature atmosphere in service, the coatings are rapidly degraded. The main cause is ascribed to the intensive element interdiffusion between the coating and the substrate. To suppress the interdiffusion, addition of a diffusion barrier (DB) is required at the interface of the overlayer and the substrate. However, M-Cr-Al-Y coating system with a ceramic diffusion barrier prepared by a conventional two-step arc ion plating (AIP) on the superalloy substrate would reduce the interfacial adhesive strength. In this paper, the multilayer system of Ni-Cr-Al-Y-Si overlayer with a DB and a bond coat (BC) was deposited on the DSM11 substrate by one-step AIP. The anti--oxidation property, the anti-diffusion ability of the barrier and the interfacial adhesive strength of the multilayer system were investigated. The results indicate that the multilayer can provide more effective protection for the DSM11 substrate than the single coating at high temperature. After 100 h thermal exposure at 1050 ℃, the surface Al₂O₃ scales are continuous, dense, and only very little amounts of alloy elements diffused from the substrate is detected in the overlayer. After\linebreak 100 cyc cycles between 1050 ℃ and room temperature (RT), the barrier layer has still well adhesive to the overlayer and the substrate. The tensile adhesion test shows that the interfacial adhesive strength is 63.6 MPa for the annealed multilayer system, which is about 20 MPa higher than that of the coating system with a DB on the DSM11 substrate deposited by the two-step AIP. The one-step AIP method can increase the interfacial adhesive strength and improve the anti-oxidation performance of the multilayer with DB.