Prioritized-buffer management for fixed sized packets in multimedia application

Abstract

A prioritized buffer for the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer for multimedia applications, in particular wireless Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) in which reservation based TDMA is performed on the basis of control data frames (CDFs), is formed by an addressable memory system which is divided into sequential equal-sized pages for storing respective data packets or ATM cells having the same number of bytes. The memory system includes a tag register for storing tags associated with the respective pages, each tag indicating whether the associated page is empty or full, a shadow register for storing conflict-free updates from the tag register, and a page register for storing pointers to the lowest free or unoccupied page. Sequential buffer addresses of memory locations in the memory system, which control sequential writing into the buffer of bytes contained in data packets, are generated from summing a first address component responsive to the contents of the page register and a second address component which is a byte count of a current packet being received from a stream data source. A succession of byte addresses is produced which jumps over addresses within pages which are full, thereby bypassing and avoiding overwriting pages which are full.