WiLink™ 8 NLCP package consists of build scripts to update WiLink™ 8 Linux driver, firmware binary, wpa supplicant, hostapd etc. For more details please refer to the release notes and user’s guide
Software block overview:
WL18xx Linux driver uses the open source components along with the interface driver for the device to realize Wi-Fi functionalities. Listing few NLCP driver package components below:
- WiLink™ 8 FW: The FW runs on the device HW to provide the PHY and MAC functionality of the Wi-Fi. The host communicates via SDIO to the WLAN device. On the device side, the WLAN MAC is responsible for the 802.11 MAC functions, and conveys WLAN packets from/to the external host to/from the FW. The MAC is responsible for the timing and the time critical decisions only. The PHY performs the 802.11 PHY functions of encoding/decoding and modulation/ demodulation, and is responsible for the RF functions of up/down modulation to carrier frequency, filtering and amplification.
- WiLink™ 8 Driver: It is an abstraction layer to the device HW and FW. Implements low level operations required to support the MAC driver.
- wlcore: Implements the low level driver for WiLink™ 8 devices, supporting mac80211 operations. Contains the common functions for all supported WiLink™ 8 chipsets.
- Wl18xx: 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™ 8 driver.
- MAC Driver: It implements layer-2 Wi-Fi protocol requirements (data and control path). This is a generic component, not platform/device specific. This layer consists of the following components.
- nl80211: Implements a net-link 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 Wi-Fi Soft-MAC solution.
- Hostap package: Contains open-source user-space package (BSD license). Provides the upper-management layers for all WLAN roles (STA, AP, P2P and Mesh). Generates 2 daemons: wpa_supplicant (STA, P2P, Mesh), and hostapd (AP).
- Utilities: provide initialization and configuration services. Implement debug and statistics capabilities