WARP Project Forums - Wireless Open-Access Research Platform

WCSL wrote:

1. What is the difference between Upper level MACs and WLAN MAC High Framework?

The high MAC framework is code that is shared between the three major projects: the AP, the client STA, and the ad-hoc IBSS. Those three projects are what we refer to as the high MAC applications. The high MAC framework provides functionality that all of the MACs need. These are things like Ethernet Encapsulation and a transmission queue.

WCSL wrote:

2. Can you briefly explain what they do for packet transmission?

For data packet transmissions from the Ethernet portal, the high MAC framework copies the contents of Ethernet receptions into DRAM via a DMA operation and performs encapsulation in-place. It then calls the Ethernet Rx callback in whichever the high MAC application you are using (e.g. ethernet_receive() in the AP). From there, you can trace the life of the just-received Ethernet frame. If applicable, it is enqueued into a transmission queue. Eventually, it is dequeued by the queue polling function and passed off to the low MAC application for wireless transmission.