Hardware-centric medium access control (MAC) device

A hardware-centric medium access control (MAC) device comprising:

• a control plane module configured for providing control functions of said hardware-centric MAC device;
• and
• a hardware media access plane module implemented as a portion of a system on a chip (SOC) and communicatively coupled to said control plane module and configured for performing real-time data and voice communication functions without requiring any microprocessor, said hardware media access plane module comprising:
• a beacon process module operable to receive and to filter out unwanted voice traffic packets in hardware without use of other portions of said hardware-centric MAC device or using any microprocessor;
• a de-fragmentation engine communicatively coupled with said beacon process module and configured for providing real-time de-fragmentation, in gate logic, of received voice traffic packets that are not filtered out by said beacon process module;
• an encryption/decryption engine coupled with said de-fragmentation engine and operable to provide on-the-fly encryption/decryption of voice traffic packets with real-time logic based key retrieval merged with on-the-fly fragmentation and defragmentation;
• and
• a fragmentation engine communicatively coupled with said encryption/decryption engine and configured for providing real-time fragmentation, in gate logic, of transmit voice traffic packets.