Programmable transmitter

A transmitter for generating a frame in one of a plurality of operating modes for transmission of the frame over a plurality of tones in a channel, the transmitter comprising:

• a table for storing respective segment formats for each of the segments of the frame, each of the segment formats being associated with one of the plurality of operating modes and each of the segment formats including respective tone formats for each of the tones;
• and
• a frame generator coupled to receive a control signal indicative of a select operating mode and operable to generate the frame in the segment formats of the select operating mode in response to the control signal;
• wherein the table includes;
• a frame structure table for storing a respective frame format for each of the plurality of operating modes, each frame format including a respective entry for each of the segments of the frame, each entry including a segment type and a respective pointer for each of the tones;
• and
• a tone map table for storing the respective tone formats for each of the frame segments for each of the operating modes, each pointer in the entry of the frame structure table pointing to one of the tone formats;
• wherein each entry in the frame structure table further includes an additional pointer for each antenna of the transmitter, a start field indicating a starting sample of the frame segment for each antenna of the transmitter, a length field indicating a length of the frame segment of the frame for the respective entry, a scale field indicating a scaling factor for the frame segment of the frame for each antenna of the transmitter and an active field indicating whether the frame segment is included in the frame sent on each antenna of the transmitter.