Wi-Fi architecture

The Wi-Fi software architecture comprises the following components. Table : Wi-Fi software components

Component	Description
User space	• Facilitates Wi-Fi parameter configuration and setup. • Supports factory testing and debugging.
Kernel space	• Facilitates communication between the driver and the application layers.
Driver	• Facilitates communication between the operating system (OS) and the wireless network hardware. • Initializes the firmware and downloads Board Data Files (BDF) required to bring up the WLAN RF. • Manages the control path and data path required for the 802.11 protocol.
Firmware	• A software component embedded in the Wi-Fi hardware device. • Manages low-level communication with the hardware. • Handles 802.11 protocol-based tasks like scanning for networks, establishing connections, and transmitting data over Wi-Fi hardware.

ath11k driver software architecture

The following figure shows the high-level Wi-Fi software architecture with ath11k driver:

Figure : Wi-Fi software architecture with ath11k driver

The software architecture of the ath11k driver can be referenced for ath10k/ath12k. The current interface used by WCN3980 is SNOC.

User space components

The user space contains the following key components: Table : User space components

Component	Description
wpa_supplicant	• Manages secure connections to Wi-Fi networks. • Supports various security protocols, including WPA3, WPA2, and legacy ones.
Host access point daemon (hostapd)	• Enables a network interface card to function as an access point and authentication server. • Transforms your device into a wireless hotspot. • Provides Wi-Fi connectivity and handles authentication to ensure that devices connected to the network are authorized. • Supports various authentication methods, including WPA, WPA2, WPA3, and Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP). • Functions as a remote authentication dial-in user service (RADIUS) client for communication with a RADIUS server. • Includes an integrated EAP server for certain EAP methods.

Kernel space components

The kernel space contains the following key components: Table : Kernel space components

Component	Description
cfg80211	• Manages the configuration of wireless devices. • Interfaces with mac80211, which uses the hardware-specific lower level ath10k, ath11k and ath12k driver.
Network stack	• A network stack provided by the OS. • Supports functions to manage the driver and handle various TCP/IP protocols as data flows to the driver.
mac80211	• Implements open-source WLAN protocols as part of the Linux kernel. • Handles the registration and configuration of the network subsystem through cfg80211. cfg80211 implements this configuration through nl80211 and wireless extensions (WEXT).

ath11k/ath12k driver components

The ath10k/ath11k/ath12k driver contains the following key components:

Component	Description
MAC interface	• Acts as an interface between mac80211 and lower layers of ath10k/ath11k/ath12k driver. • Interfaces with mac80211 through ath10k_ops/ath11k_ops/ath12k_ops_wifi7. • Sends data and management frames to the data path. • Sends configuration commands to the WMI path.
Control path	• Performs operations such as scan, authentication, and association.
Data path	• Manages the data traffic transmitted and received by WLAN. • Supports various features to ensure optimal performance.
Host software-firmware interface	• Includes WMI, HTT, and HAL.
WMI/HTT	• Implements high-level protocols between the host driver and firmware running on WLAN Qualcomm Hexagon™ Digital Signal Processor (Hexagon) on the SoC. • Typically, the WMI interface is used for control path transactions, and HTT is used for data path transactions.
HTT/HAL	• Abstracts hardware data structures and implements the recipe for direct MMIO-based register access and memory access. • Depends on the hardware or chip. • Interfaces between data path driver and WLAN hardware in a highly optimized packet path implementation.
Host interface for bus abstraction	• Provides host-target bus abstraction services. • Abstracts the peripheral control interface express (PCIe).
PCIe	• A hardware interface in the driver.
Copy engine (CE)	• Implements hardware pipe, Standard Ring Interface (SRNG) based communication channel between the host driver and firmware running on the CE interface over PCIe.
SNOC	• Primary interconnect fabric within a SOC (WCN3980 only).

Firmware components

The WLAN firmware runs on a dedicated processor (Q6). The WLAN firmware binary contains the following key components:

Various 802.11 protocols and the statemachine of software modules
Performance-related software algorithms like rate adaptation, coexistence, MIMO, and OFDMA
Core MAC hardware programming recipes
Uniform MAC/PHY service interface to upper layers
Core PHY and RF hardware programming recipes. For example, RF calibration, BDF, and RADAR.

Figure : Firmware components

The following table provides the list of firmware components and their description. Table : Firmware components

Component	Description
Host-firmware interface	• Wireless Module Interface (WMI) – Control plane API definitions between host and firmware • Host Target Interface (HTT) – Data plane API definitions between host and firmware
Protocol	• Implements various 802.11 standards protocols and state machines, offloads, host command, scan algorithms and event handling
Performance algorithm and MAC services	• Performance algorithm implements performance related software algorithms like rate adaptation, transmit scheduler, Multi-User (MU) scheduler, MU grouping, Resource Unit (RU) allocator, Air Time Fairness (ATF) and hardware IP specific: Tx and Rx Data path, MAC control path sequences • MAC register programming and descriptor setup/completion, coexistence hardware recipes, chip power hardware recipes
HAL PHY	Common software infrastructure for PHY/RFA hardware and HAL-PHY interface to firmware.
PHY/RF software	• PHY/RFA hardware component access interface implementation modules containing hardware programming sequences/recipes specific to a given PHY/RFA and platform hardware IP
System software	• Implements all platform specific SoC related services

Introduction

Architecture

Key Documents

Technologies

System

Release Notes

ath11k driver software architecture

User space components

Kernel space components

ath11k/ath12k driver components

Firmware components

​ath11k driver software architecture

​User space components

​Kernel space components

​ath11k/ath12k driver components

​Firmware components

ath11k driver software architecture

User space components

Kernel space components

ath11k/ath12k driver components

Firmware components