A generic hardware MAC for wireless personal area network platforms

This paper presents a generic hardware-MAC for systems designed based on high rate (IEEE 802.15.3) and low rate (IEEE 802.15.4)Wireless Personal Area Networks. functionality that are better run in hardware are moved over from the software part of the MAC layer. An easy to access memory like interface has been defined for data and control transfer between the software and hardware parts of theMAC layer. A key challenge in designing such a system was to arrive at a generic architecture without compromising with either of the standards on the lines of which the two systems are implemented. Emphasis on reuse of the modules has been done in order to avoid repetition of design and implementation effort and in turn reducing the time required for testing. The design has been successfully tested on different FPGA platforms