0804-5000-25

Industrial Powerline Module

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3

System Block Diagram

This block diagram present the 0804-5000-25 powerline module in a typical environment. Seven different types of interfaces

are shown. These interfaces are described in detail below.

Media Independent Interface (MII)

The MII interface is configured as either an Ethernet Medium Access Controller (MAC) or a Physical Medium Dependent (PMD or

PHY) controller. Medium Independent Interface (MII) is an industry standard, multi-vendor interface between the MAC and PHY

sub-layers. It provides a simple connection between Ethernet PHY controllers and IEEE802.3 Ethernet MACs from a variety of

sources.

MII consists of separate 4-bit data paths for transmit and receive data along with carrier sense and collision detection. Further

details of the MII are available from the IEEE 802.3u Standard.

Configuration straps described in Section 3 set the MII operation to a MAC or PHY controller. The MAC and PHY configurations

support 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps in half-duplex or full-duplex modes and flow control for half-duplex and full-duplex connections.

The Ethernet MAC module implements standard Ethernet MAC functionality. The Ethernet MAC is connected to an external

Ethernet PHY function. The MAC configuration provides bridging between Ethernet and the powerline. The PHY configuration

emulates Ethernet PHY functionality and provides HomePlug AV connectivity to devices designed to communicate over an

Ethernet network.

The MII (Ethernet) interface has separate transmit and receive packet buffering. When operating as a MAC the MII transmit FIFO

is 2 KB and the receive FIFO is 8 KB. When operating as a PHY controller, the MII transmit FIFO is 8 KB and the receive FIFO is 2 KB.