A single-chip 802.11a MAC/PHY with a 32 b RISC processor

An 802.11a compliant MAC/PHY processing chip has been successfully fabricated in 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS. Thirty million transistors are integrated on a 10.91 /spl times/ 10.91 mm/sup 2/ die in a 361-pin PFBGA. The MAC functions are fully implemented by firmware on an embedded 32 b RISC processor and hardware acceleration logic. The PHY supports a complete set of data rates up to 54 Mb/s.