BCM4339 Preliminary Data Sheet
Wireless LAN MAC and PHY
Section 11: Wireless LAN MAC and PHY
IEEE 802.11ac MAC
The BCM4339 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 35.
The following sections provide an overview of the important modules in the MAC.
Figure 35: WLAN MAC Architecture
Embedded CPU Interface
Host Registers, DMA Engines
TX-FIFO
32 KB
RX-FIFO
10 KB
PSM
PMQ
PSM
UCODE
Memory
IFS
Backoff, BTCX
WEP
TKIP, AES, WAPI
TSF
SHM
BUS
IHR
NAV
BUS
Shared Memory
6 KB
RXE
RX A-MPDU
TXE
TX A-MPDU
EXT- IHR
MAC-PHY Interface
The BCM4339 WLAN media access controller (MAC) supports features specified in the IEEE 802.11 base
standard, and amended by IEEE 802.11n. The key MAC features include:
•
•
•
Enhanced MAC for supporting IEEE 802.11ac features
Transmission and reception of aggregated MPDUs (A-MPDU) for high throughput (HT)
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
Broadcom®
November 17, 2014 • 4339-DS106-R
Page 86
CYPRESS [ CYPRESS ]
