Hardware-centric medium access control (MAC) device

1. A voice communication device comprising:

a microprocessor;

a memory communicatively coupled to said microprocessor;

a wireless communication module communicatively coupled to said microprocessor, said wireless communication module for receiving and transmitting voice traffic over a wireless connection and comprising:

a physical layer (PHY) device; and

a hardware-centric medium access control (MAC) device implemented as a portion of a system on a chip (SOC) communicatively coupled to said PHY device and conditionally activated from a shutdown state by said PHY device, wherein said MAC device is configured to perform real-time voice communication functions using the SOC, said hardware-centric MAC comprising:

a control plane module for providing control functions of said hardware-centric MAC device; and

a hardware media access plane module communicatively coupled to said control plane module and for performing real-time data and voice communication functions without requiring a microprocessor, said hardware media access plane module comprising:

a beacon process module to receive and to filter out unwanted voice traffic packets in hardware without use of other portions of said hardware-centric MAC or using said microprocessor, such that said microprocessor remains in a sleep mode during beacon processing by said beacon process module;

a de-fragmentation engine communicatively coupled with said beacon process module and for providing real-time de-fragmentation, in gate logic, of received voice traffic packets that are not filtered out by said beacon process module;

an encryption/decryption engine coupled with said de-fragmentation engine to provide on-the-fly encryption/decryption of voice traffic packets with real-time logic based key retrieval merged with on-the-fly fragmentation and defragmentation; and

a fragmentation engine communicatively coupled with said encryption/decryption engine and for providing real-time fragmentation, in gate logic, of transmit voice traffic packets.

2. The voice communication device of claim 1 wherein said hardware media access plane module is implemented in gate logic, such that real-timing requirements of said hardware-centric MAC device are handled in gate logic.

3. The voice communication device of claim 2 wherein said control plane module is implemented in gate logic.

4. The voice communication device of claim 2 wherein at least a portion of said control plane module is implemented in programmable hardware.

5. The voice communication device of claim 1 wherein said microprocessor is operable to provide control functionality of said MAC device.

6. The voice communication device of claim 5 wherein said microprocessor is operable to execute a MAC driver for controlling configuration settings of said hardware-centric MAC device.

7. The voice communication device of claim 6 wherein said microprocessor is not operable to execute said MAC driver during real-time data communication.

8. The voice communication device of claim 1 wherein said control plane module comprises a real-time logic (RTL) station management entity (SME) for monitoring features of said hardware-centric MAC device.

9. The voice communication device of claim 1 , wherein said sleep mode comprises a shut down of a core of said microprocessor.

10. A wireless transceiver comprising:

a physical layer (PHY) device implemented as a portion of a system on a chip (SOC); and

a hardware-centric medium access control (MAC) device implemented as a portion of said system in a chip (SOC) and communicatively coupled with said PHY device, said hardware-centric MAC device conditionally activated from a shutdown state by said PHY device, said hardware-centric MAC device comprising:

a control plane module for providing control functions of said hardware-centric MAC device; and

a hardware media access plane module communicatively coupled to said control plane module and for performing real-time data communication functions using the SOC, said hardware media access plane module comprising:

a beacon process module to receive and to filter out unwanted data packets in hardware without use of other portions of said hardware-centric MAC or using said microprocessor;

a de-fragmentation engine communicatively coupled with said beacon process module and for providing real-time de-fragmentation, in gate logic, of received data packets that are not filtered out by said beacon process module;

an encryption/decryption engine coupled with said de-fragmentation engine to provide on-the-fly encryption/decryption of data packets with real-time logic based key retrieval merged with on-the-fly fragmentation and defragmentation; and

a fragmentation engine communicatively coupled with said encryption/decryption engine and for providing real-time fragmentation, in gate logic, of transmit data packets.