On the Performance of the Energy-Efficient Split FIFO-Buffer Architecture for the Medium Access Controller of IEEE 802.11 WLANs

Rapid growth of high rate data transmissions in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) stimulates the ratification of IEEE 802.11 standard and its successors. Energy Conservation (EC) is an important issue in the design of mobile devices that are characterized by limited battery energy. We ever proposed a Split FIFO-Buffer Architecture (SFBA) for the Medium Access Controller (MAC) of the 802.11 WLAN to achieve EC. In this paper, necessary interface functions for the SFBA are defined and circuits are designed using the VHDL codes. An Altera software is employed to justify the functionality and evaluate the performance. To further exploit the advantages resulting from splitting, we also present an MAC with Extended SFBA (ESFBA), in which both the FIFO and the Buffer in the SFBA are extensively divided into two parts with equal capacity. Simulation results show that by using the SFBA and ESFBA, significant power consumption of the FIFO in a conventional architecture can be saved. It is found that EC capability of the SFBA and ESFBA depends on the traffic characteristics.