802.11a MAC layer: firmware/hardware co-design

Author

Yeong, J.H. ; Rao, X.M. ; Shajan, M.R. ; Wang, Q. ; Lin, C.Y. ; Qu, X.H.

Author_Institution

Inst. for Infocomm Res., Singapore, Singapore

Volume

3

fYear

2003

fDate

15-18 Dec. 2003

Firstpage

1923

Abstract

Embedded wireless communication devices nowadays are getting more and more sophisticated and running at higher speeds than ever before. In order to achieve the flexibility of design and shorten the time-to-market, a firmware/hardware co-design approach is being adopted more often. The IEEE 802.11a MAC layer design conducted at the Institute for Infocomm Research uses this concept to realize the full potential of the protocol and at the same time provide the flexibility for future upgrade. This paper explains in detail the process of firmware/hardware co-design and the rationale behind our approach.

Keywords

access protocols; firmware; hardware-software codesign; wireless LAN; IEEE 802.11a; MAC layer; hardware codesign; time-to-market; wireless communication devices; Application specific integrated circuits; Field programmable gate arrays; Hardware; IEC; Local area networks; Media Access Protocol; Microprogramming; Reduced instruction set computing; Wireless LAN; Wireless communication;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Information, Communications and Signal Processing, 2003 and Fourth Pacific Rim Conference on Multimedia. Proceedings of the 2003 Joint Conference of the Fourth International Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8185-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICICS.2003.1292802

Filename

1292802