Hardware-centric medium access control (MAC) device

1. A hardware-centric medium access control (MAC) device comprising:

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

a hardware media access plane module implemented as a portion of a system on a chip (SOC) and communicatively coupled to said control plane module and configured for performing real-time data and voice communication functions without requiring any microprocessor, said hardware media access plane module comprising:

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

a de-fragmentation engine communicatively coupled with said beacon process module and configured 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 and operable 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 configured for providing real-time fragmentation, in gate logic, of transmit voice traffic packets.

2. The hardware-centric MAC 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 hardware-centric MAC device of claim 1 wherein said control plane module is implemented in gate logic.

4. The hardware-centric MAC device of claim 1 wherein at least a portion of said control plane module is implemented in programmable hardware.

5. The hardware-centric MAC device of claim 1 wherein said control plane module is communicatively coupled to a microprocessor operable to provide control functionality of said MAC device.

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

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