Design Of A10M/100M Ethernet MAC Controller Based On IEEE802.3Standard

IEEE802.3Ethernet standard protocol is one of the dominating network protocols whichwas developed and published in1982by IEEE802.3Committee, and also maintained by themin the following30years till now. The Ethernet technology could be divided into two majorparts, PHY and MAC. MAC, which is short for Media Access Control, has a goodcompatibility and media independence, and plays an important role in the Ethernet technology.With the realization of combination of network technology and SoC technology, embeddedEthernet devices which could be integrated in a single chip have been more and more widelyapplied in all aspects of human’s life, such as industrial flow control, commercial application,traffic management and household applications, and have brought great convenience andimproved efficiency. In this paper, the major design work would be concentrated on designingan Ethernet MAC controller based on IEEE802.3protocol.In this thesis, the history and architecture of the Ethernet is introduced at first, followedby the mechanism of MAC protocol and transmission process of Ethernet frames, based onwhich the functions and architecture of the Ethernet MAC controller to be designed areclarified. A Top-Down design method is taken in submodules partition according to thefunctions determined. A widely used hardware description language Verilog HDL is adoptedto realize the RTL coding of submodules including transmitting module, receiving module,MAC control module, MII management module, status module and registers module. Someimprovement designs are adopted including a novel CAM memory cell which could be usedfor address recognition, temperature protection circuit etc. TestBench is also descripted inVerilog HDL, by which the PCI host transmission request and host interface timing issimulated. VCS+Nanosim is used for Analog-Digital hybrid functional simulation. In the endof the thesis, the work of the thesis is summarized, and future work direction is proposed.The simulation result shows that this Ethernet MAC controller can support different datarates of10Mbps and100Mbps, different working modes of half-duplex and full-duplex, aswell as MII interface standard, which basically achieves the functions defined above. As longas mended slightly based on actual demand, it can be easily integrated into different kinds ofembedded applications and provides support of Ethernet protocols, which can improve thedeveloping efficiency greatly.