The following is the list of features supported by WiLink8 driver and device.

• Linux open-source Wi-Fi package.
• TI NLCP releases are Wi-Fi Alliance pre-certified.
• IEEE: 802.11 a,b,g,n, 2X2 MIMO @ 2.4 GHz and antenna diversity @ 5 GHz
• Supported Modes: STA, AP, P2P, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi Mesh
• Up to 100 Mbps UDP throughput
• Security: WPA3, WMM-PS, WMM-AC, WPA/2PSK, Ent,WPS,WPSv2
• Low power support: Station WoW & Suspend/Resume , AP ELP (800 μA idle connect)
• Co-existence with other 2.4 GHz protocol: BT/BLE and TI ZigBee at 2.4 GHz
• AP DFS, radar detection at 5 GHz
• Multi Role Multi Channel: concurrent operation of 2 WLAN roles on a single device.
• Wi-Fi over mesh support: open 802.11s

For specific features and bug fixes updated in R8.8, see the WiLink8 R8.8 Release Notes . Additionally, WiLink™ 8 WLAN Features User's Guide provides complete details of the WiLink8 supported features.

WL18xx Linux driver uses the open source components along with interface driver for the device to realize Wi-Fi functionalities. Figure 2-1 shows the high level driver partitioning and architecture.

Figure 2-1 WiLink8 Driver Architecture

The section below briefs the high-level components in the driver layers and their functionality.

• WiLink8 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 Driver 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 devices, supporting mac80211 operations. Contains the common functions for all supported WiLink 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 driver.
• MAC Driver 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. 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.