SWRU561A September   2020  – October 2020 WL1801MOD , WL1805MOD , WL1807MOD , WL1831 , WL1831MOD , WL1835MOD , WL1837MOD

 

  1.   Trademarks
  2. 1Driver Supported Features
  3. 2WL18xx Linux Driver Architecture Overview
  4. 3Platform Integration
    1. 3.1 Configuration required for Board Device Tree (DTS/DTB)
    2. 3.2 Configuring the Kernel for TI WLAN Drivers
    3. 3.3 Configuration required for Board Device Tree (DTS/DTB)
    4. 3.4 Building R8.8 Release Using Build Utilities
    5. 3.5 Building WiLink8 Driver Release Binaries Individually
  5. 4Booting and WLAN Bring-Up
    1. 4.1 Configuring the WiLink8 Target
  6. 5Testing Basic WLAN Functionality
    1. 5.1 STA Mode
      1. 5.1.1 Station Mode Procedure for Unsecured AP
      2. 5.1.2 Station Mode Procedure for Secured AP
      3. 5.1.3 Verifying Connectivity
    2. 5.2 AP Mode
      1. 5.2.1 AP Mode Procedure
      2. 5.2.2 Starting the AP
      3. 5.2.3 Verifying Connectivity
    3. 5.3 Multirole (AP +STA mode)
      1. 5.3.1 General Procedure for Multirole Connection
    4. 5.4 IEEE802.11s Mesh Mode
  7. 6References
  8.   A FAQ and Debug Hints

3 Platform Integration

The following section details the integration of the driver to the Linux SDK platform. The references and instructions provided are applicable to any platform using Linux operating system. However specific instructions mentioned below are based on PROCESSOR-SDK-LINUX-AM335X 06_00_00_07. For WiLink8 hardware integration, see the WiLink™ Module Hardware Integration Guide.

The generic steps to integrate the WiLink8 R8.8 driver release manually to any kernel are provided below. The same method can be used for upgrading the WiLink8 driver version of an existing SDK to R8.8 release. However if TI SDK is used (with pre-built kernel) along with “build utilities” scripts can be used. Note that the following steps assume Linux host environment up and running. For more information on setting up your Linux host PC, follow the instructions provided in Processor SDK Getting Started Guide.

  1. Download the Kernel (4.19+) and platform SDK.
  2. Install the SDK image to SD card as per the SDK installation instructions.
  3. Configure Kernel using verify_kernel.sh utility or manually.
  4. Apply kernel patches – this needs to be done if building the kernel for the first time.
  5. Build WLAN modules, kernel zImage (optional), kernel modules (build-utilities) and BeagleBone Black DTB.
  6. Compile the device tree files for specific boards (dts → dtb) and update.
  7. Copy the build outputs to SD card.

Steps 1 and 2 are manual. This is the starting step irrespective of the SDK used. These steps will ensure that default file system provided by the SDK is installed into the SD card. Since as part of the R8.8 WiLink8 WLAN driver build only a subset of components related to the WLAN and the kernel and modules are built, it is important to have the complete default file system installed.

Steps 3, 4 and 6 (except for step -5, DTS/B file) can be performed using the “build_scripts” utility. The DTS/B file is hardware specific and needs to be created based on the hardware design.