MAC and baseband hardware platforms for RF-MIMO WLAN

The paper describes hardware solutions for the IEEE 802.11 MAC (Medium Access Control) layer and IEEE 802.11a digital baseband in an RF-MIMO WLAN transceiver that performs the signal combining in the analogue domain. Architecture and implementation details of the MAC processor including a hardware accelerator and a 16-bit MAC-PHY interface are presented. The proposed hardware solution is tested and verified using a PHY link emulator. Architecture, design, implementation, and test of a reconfigurable digital baseband processor are described too. Description includes the baseband algorithms (the main blocks being MIMO channel estimation and Tx-Rx analog beamforming), their FPGA-based implementation, baseband printed-circuit-board, and real-time tests.