Protocol accelerator design for IEEE 802.15.3 MAC implementation

IEEE Std. 802.15.3 is designed for MAC and PHY specifications of high rate wireless personal area networks (WPAN), and assumed to be candidate MAC protocol for emerging UWB techniques. The high data rate (up to 480 Mbps) with precise timing requirements (near 1 μs) in the protocol has beyond the capability of current software centric MAC implementation methods. We briefly analyze the bottleneck of the design, and presented protocol accelerator schemes aiming at the timing critical tasks in the standard. These configurable building blocks could be reused in wireless MAC implementation, especially high data rate applications. Performance analysis shows that the whole MAC system greatly benefits from the novel hardware acceleration, especially in terms of data rate.