BCM4330 Preliminary Data Sheet
Wireless LAN MAC and PHY
Section 12: Wireless LAN MAC and PHY
MAC Features
The BCM4330 WLAN media access controller (MAC) supports features specified in the 802.11 base standard,
and amended by 802.11n. The salient features are listed below:
• Transmission and reception of aggregated MPDUs (A-MPDU)
• Support for power management schemes, including WMM power-save, power-save multi-poll (PSMP) and
multiphase PSMP operation
• Support for immediate ACK and Block-ACK policies
• Interframe space timing support, including RIFS
• Support for RTS/CTS and CTS-to-self frame sequences for protecting frame exchanges
• Back-off counters in hardware for supporting multiple priorities as specified in the WMM specification
• Timing synchronization function (TSF), network allocation vector (NAV) maintenance, and target beacon
transmission time (TBTT) generation in hardware
• Hardware offload for AES-CCMP, legacy WPA TKIP, legacy WEP ciphers, WAPI, and support for key
management
• Support for coexistence with Bluetooth and other external radios
• Programmable independent basic service set (IBSS) or infrastructure basic service set functionality
• Statistics counters for MIB support
MAC Description
The 4329 WLAN MAC is designed to support high-throughput operation with low-power consumption. It does
so without compromising the Bluetooth coexistence policies, thereby enabling optimal performance over both
networks. In addition, several power saving modes have been implemented that allow the MAC to consume
very little power while maintaining network-wide timing synchronization. The architecture diagram of the MAC
is shown in Figure 34 on page 86.
The following sections provide an overview of the important modules in the MAC.
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BROADCOM
BCM4330 Preliminary Data Sheet
April 28, 2011 • 4330-DS304-RI
Page 85
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