System Architecture - Motorola LA-51XX Driver Programmer's Manual

1-2 LA-51XX Compact Flash Adapter Driver Programmer's Guide
• WLAN - Wireless LAN.
• WRM - The file format containing the firmware

1.3 System Architecture

The following figure depicts the system architecture comprising the SHoC firmware, SHoC driver and
applications that interact with driver to configure SHoC firmware:
SHoC Driver: The SHoC driver provides an interface between the firmware running on the device and the
operating system running on the host. The SHoC driver is responsible for obtaining data frames and requests
from the upper layers and converting them into a format understood by the firmware running on the WLAN
device. It is also responsible for obtaining data frames, response, and traps from the device.
Driver API: The Driver APIs abstract details of the WLAN device to the higher layers.
SHoC Firmware: The Firmware provides 802.11functionality. It receives 802.3 data packets from the driver
on host, converts them into 802.11 data packets and sends them to the wireless media. Similarly, it receives
802.11 packets from wireless media, converts them to 802.3 packet and passes them to the driver on host.
The SHoC architecture implements majority of the 802.11 functionality on the WLAN device. In some MAC
architectures, the 802.11 MAC is partitioned such that most of the 802.11 functionality is performed on the
host and only time critical functions are performed on the WLAN device.
Applications:
• setoid()/getoid() are required to configure and read the values configured on wireless NIC firmware as
and when required.
• Port Access Entity Daemon (PAED) is used for all security/authentication on the AP viz. ACL/WPA/WPA2
etc and normally runs as a daemon.
PAED is a server process that handles authentication and security for wireless access points. It supports
following security modes:
• Open system
• WEP (40 and 104)
• Legacy 802.1x with WEP