Software/Hardware Co-design AndFPGA Verification OfIEEE Std. 802.11b MAC

In recent years, wireless local area networks (WLAN) have been a period of rapid growth. The WLAN system that satisfies IEEE Std. 802.11b is successfully commercialized. The IEEE Std. 802.11b specifies the functions in both of the physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layers of the networks. In MAC layer, it employs distributed coordination function (DCF) and point coordination function (PCF) as two kinds of fundamental access method. In physical layer, it defines the method that has 1M, 2M, 5.5M and 11M bps data transfer rates with DBPSK, DQPSK and CCK modulation at 2.4GHz band carrier.This paper presents the Software/Hardware co-design and verification of MAC processor, which accorded with IEEE Std. 802.11b. This MAC processor is implemented with an embedded processor and verified with FPGA chip. The design of MAC processor includes hardware and software. The hardware part includes an embedded system based on Xilinx IP, PCMCIA interface module and other interface module for WLAN front chips. The software part, which is also as firmware, mainly includes real time operating system (RTOS), MAC application program and C code for interface modules. RTOS is realized in μC/OS-II. The MAC application is described with SDL, and C code of the application is generated with SDL tools. A verification platform for MAC system is built, which consists of Xilinx FPGA and Intersil PRISM II chipset (base-band processor and RF/IF chips). A miniport network driver of this MAC system under windows 2000 is developed in order to test MAC processor in TCP/IP layers with host computer. Verification of basic MAC Functions is accomplished successfully.