Reconfigurable hardware acceleration of WLAN security

Abstract

A novel wireless local area network (WLAN) security processor is described in this paper. This processor is capable of offloading all security encapsulation in an IEEE 802.11i compliant medium access control (MAC) layer to a reconfigurable hardware accelerator. Embedded software provides flexible support for many other RC4 and AES based security protocols, such as those relevant to Internet protocol security (IPSec). The unique design is primarily targeted at WLAN applications, and as such is capable of performing wired equivalent privacy (WEP), temporal key integrity protocol (TKIP), counter mode with CBC-MAC protocol (CCMP), and wireless robust authentication protocol (WRAP). The use of dedicated instructions designed for WLAN applications results in reduced instruction code footprints in comparison to general-purpose processors, and provides the high throughput necessary for 54 Mbps IEEE 802.11 a/g.