NOTE: this page is for archival only, see the note at the end of the page.

wl12xx

Driver for Texas Instruments' Wilink(tm) combo devices WL1271/3 and WL1281/3

Overview

  • The WL1271x and WL128x chipsets support both single band (2.4GHz) and dual band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) modes.
  • WL127x is a combo chip comprises of WLAN, Bluetooth(tm) and FM Rx/Tx technologies. WL128x adds a GPS core to it.
  • The open source driver supports the standard mac80211 full MAC architecture

Driver supported features

  • 802.11 a/b/g/n
  • STA and AP(*) modes
  • 11n block acknowledgment
  • SDIO runtime PM
  • Scheduled scan(*)

(*) upstream in progress

Under development

  • Advanced scan features for further host offloading
  • Throughput optimizations
  • Further power scheme optimizations

Get the latest wl12xx driver

  • The wl12xx driver resides under the the wireless drivers domain.
  • The latest driver can be downloaded at:

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/luca/wl12xx.git

or

git clone http://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/luca/wl12xx.git
  • Using compat-wireless the wl12xx driver and its dependencies can be compiled for kernels >= 2.6.27

  • Note: if you are using compat-wireless to back port the wl12xx driver to kernels 2.6.36 or earlier, you will need to integrate the following patches for proper operation. These patches are not part of the compat-wireless package.

    1. SDIO runtime PM support - here

    2. Lenient generic runtime pm callbacks - here

Firmware

  • The firmware for WL127x chipset is available under the Linux firmware license on David Woodhouse's git tree at:

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/dwmw2/linux-firmware.git

or

git clone http://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/dwmw2/linux-firmware.git
  • The firmware is accompanied by an NVS file that is required for the proper operation of the WL127x device. The NVS file contains initialization data as well as required calibration information

Hardware Information

TODO

  • Add information on the calibration process
  • Upstream AP firmware
  • Add information on WLAN-BT co-existence
  • Add driver support for 11j channels

This is a static dump of the old wiki, taken after locking it in January 2015. The new wiki is at https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/.
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