A new solution for micro-mobility management in 802.11 wireless LANs using FPGA

Seamless connectivity in wireless access networks is critical for time sensitive applications requiring Quality-of-Service guarantees with bounded data transmission delay. Currently, the latency inherent in the handoff process can preclude the successful delivery of such applications by introducing delays up to several seconds. As the mobile clients are moving from one access point to another, the convectional layer-2 handoff consumes more time in the channel-scanning process. We present a novel WLAN handoff architecture using a hardware method. This new handoff procedure reduces the discovery phase according two models extended from the basis model. There are two general methods to implement MAC functions in normal case. The first method is CPU-based. It uses software for protocol analysis and CPU, such as DSP, for process management. It is more flexible in design stage and easy to modify, but its disadvantages are processing speed too low and higher cost. The other method means that all functions are processed by hardware circuits. The advantage of this method is circuit reconfiguration and processing speed very high, but it needs long developed time. We purpose the last method to implement handoff functions in the MAC layer.