Design and Implementation of an IEEE 802.15.3-based Ultra-Wideband MAC Controller

Abstract

The significant features of Ultra- Wideband (UWB) such as low power, lower cost, and high data rates have made it an emerging and promising communication technology for Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN). IEEE 802.15.3 has defined a TDMA-based Medium Access Controller (MAC) for WPAN, which is regarded as the most appropriate candidate for high speed UWB MAC. Moreover, it has been used by UWB product vendors as the MAC layer of their UWB products. However, the implementation of 802.15.3-based UWB MAC has not shown in the previous literatures. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of an 802.15.3-based UWB MAC, which is developed by using the hardware-software co-design approach. The maximum throughput of the synthesized hardware code can reach 800Mbps, which shows that it is suitable as a high speed UWB MAC.