This topic is for ConnectCore 6 SOMs that have an Atheros AR6233 wireless MAC. If you are using a ConnectCore 6N SOM that has a Qualcomm QCA6564 wireless MAC, see this topic for ConnectCore 6 Plus, which uses the same Wi-Fi chip.

Some variants of the ConnectCore 6 system-on-module assemble a Qualcomm-Atheros Atheros chip capable of 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz connections using 802.11 a/b/g/n. This Wi-Fi chip is connected to uSDHC1 controller.

A maximum of five clients are supported when using Qualcomm’s AR6233 in softAP mode.

Features

  • IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n support

  • Software Access Point (SoftAP) support

  • Security (Open, WEP, WPA/WPA2 PSK, WPA/WPA2 Enterprise)

  • Power save

  • Bluetooth coexistence

  • Wi-Fi Direct (P2P)

  • Concurrent mode (AP-STA and STA-P2P)

The Atheros chip does not support Adhoc Wi-Fi mode.

Kernel configuration

You can manage the wireless driver support through the kernel configuration option:

  • Atheros ath6kl SDIO support (CONFIG_ATH6KL_SDIO)

This option is enabled as built-in on the ConnectCore 6 SBC kernel configuration file.

Kernel driver

The Atheros ATH6KL wireless driver is located at drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath6kl/.

Device tree bindings and customization

Device tree bindings for the Atheros wireless driver are documented at Documentation/devicetree/bindings/digi,ath6kl,wireless.txt.

Definition of the wireless device

ConnectCore 6 device tree
wireless {
        compatible = "atheros,ath6kl";
        ath6kl-p2p-enable;
        ath6kl-softmac-enable;
        digi,pwrdown-gpios = <&gpio_extender 3 0>;
        /* U-Boot will fill in the MAC address here */
};

This node is also used as a placeholder for containing Digi’s wireless MAC address.

MAC address

The MAC address of the wireless interface is programmed during manufacturing on the ConnectCore 6 eMMC using U-Boot environment variable wlanaddr. It is also printed on the module label.

Before booting the operating system, U-Boot writes the MAC address stored in environment variable wlanaddr into the device tree wireless node under property mac-address.

If the boolean property ath6kl-softmac-enable is defined in the device tree, the wireless device will use Digi’s MAC address. If not, it will use Atheros' MAC embedded in the chip.

See [{XREF_yocto_r_uboot-environment-variables}].

Known issues

  • When using the SoftAP mode on Band A, channels used for Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS) are not supported.

  • The firmware does not support the following configuration modes:

    • Concurrent modes involving P2P mode, such as P2P + SoftAP or P2P + STA

    • The Bluetooth + SoftAP + STA concurrent mode