WiLink™ 8 Wi-Fi Driver for Linux OS

WILINK8-WIFI-NLCP

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Description

The NLCP package contains the install package, pre-compiled object and source of the TI Linux Open-Source Wi-Fi image to easily upgrade the default LINUX EZSDK release with the TI WiLink™ family NLCP Wi-Fi driver. The software is built with Linaro GCC 4.7 and can be added to Linux SDKs that use similar toolchain on other platforms.

The Sigma package provides the required APIs for WL8 code to support automated Sigma certification testing.

The WAPI package provides the WPA Supplicant patch to support WAPI security protocol.

For licensing information, release notes and profiles supported, please download the package.>

Software block overview:

• NLCP WLAN –Software components
  • MAC Driver
    • Implements layer 2 Wi-Fi protocol requirements (data and control path).
    • Generic component, not platform/device specific.
  • WiLink™ Driver
    • Abstracts the WiLink™ Device.
    • Implements low level operations required to support the MAC driver.
  • Hostap package:
    • Open-source user-space package (BSD license).
    • Provides the upper-management layers for all WLAN roles (STA, AP, P2P).
    • Generates 2 daemons: wpa_supplicant (STA & P2P), and hostapd (AP).
  • Utilities:
    • Provide initialization and configuration services.
    • Implement debug and statistics capabilities.
  • CRDA:
    • Central Regulatory Domain Agent, required for communication between the kernel and user-space for compliance with regulatory restrictions world wide.

          Click on the picture above to enlarge image.

Driver-core components

• nl80211: Implements a netlink interface between user-space and kernel space components of the Linux Wireless solution.
• cfg80211: The Linux wireless configuration API. (This is the lowest layer that is common for both soft-MAC and hard-MAC).
• mac80211: The Linux kernel module implementing MAC-layer functions for WiFi Soft-MAC solution.
• wlcore: Implements the low level driver for WiLink™ devices, supporting mac80211 operations. Contains the common functions for all supported WiLink™ chipsets.
• wl18xx/wl12xx: Implement chip specific functions and services. Supports the wlcore by implementing HW-specific functions.
• wlcore_sdio: Adaptation layer between the SDIO driver and the WiLink™ driver.

Features

• Linux open-source Wi-Fi package.
• Leverages the benefits of community-based development:
  • Product of work done by tens of developers.
  • Fast adaptation of new specifications and features.
  • Contains a generic MAC-driver (chip independent), meaning it is developed and tested on many platforms in many organizations.
• TI NLCP releases go through extensive validation and quality assurance.
• TI NLCP releases are WiFi Alliance pre-certified.
• Contain inherent mechanism for migrating the latest driver to earlier Kernel versions, to match the customer platform’s OS version.
• IEEE: 802.11 a,b,g,n, 2X2 MIMO @ 2.4GHz and diversity @ 5GHz
• Modes: STA, AP, P2P, WiFi Direct
• TP: Up to 100Mbps UDP
• Security: WMM-PS, WMM-AC, WPA/2PSK, Ent,WPS,WPSv2
• Low power: Station WoW & Suspend/Resume , AP ELP (800uA idle connect)
• Coex: BT/BLE and TI Zigbee at 2.4GHz
• AP DFS, radar detection at 5GHz
• Multi Role Multi Channel : concurrent operation of 2 WLAN roles on a single device.
• Wifi over mesh support: open source 802.11s

Supported modes of operation

Multi Role - More than one Wi-Fi role is activated at the same time as Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) Based Concurrency - each role will get a portion of the “Air Time”.