Patent ID: 7792141

Claim:
A voice communication device comprising: a microprocessor; a memory communicatively coupled to said microprocessor; a wireless communication module communicatively coupled to said microprocessor, said wireless communication module for receiving and transmitting voice traffic over a wireless connection and comprising: a physical layer (PHY) device; and a hardware-centric medium access control (MAC) device implemented as a portion of a system on a chip (SOC) communicatively coupled to said PHY device and conditionally activated from a shutdown state by said PHY device, wherein said MAC device is configured to perform real-time voice communication functions using the SOC, said hardware-centric MAC comprising: a control plane module for providing control functions of said hardware-centric MAC device; and a hardware media access plane module communicatively coupled to said control plane module and for performing real-time data and voice communication functions without requiring a microprocessor, said hardware media access plane module comprising: a beacon process module to receive and to filter out unwanted voice traffic packets in hardware without use of other portions of said hardware-centric MAC or using said microprocessor, such that said microprocessor remains in a sleep mode during beacon processing by said beacon process module; a de-fragmentation engine communicatively coupled with said beacon process module and 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 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 for providing real-time fragmentation, in gate logic, of transmit voice traffic packets.