Driver Firmware Development for Wi-Fi Chip

Abstract

Wireless protocols are rapidly evolving, with the current market scenario predominantly utilizing three protocols: IEEE 802.11ax, IEEE 802.11ac, and IEEE 802.11n. Among these, IEEE 802.11ax, also known as HE (high efficiency), is a sixth-generation protocol that has achieved 30\% higher performance in terms of throughput compared to older protocols like 802.11ac. NXP is one of the few companies that manufacture wireless connectivity chips, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Zigbee. The focus of their work is on the development and maintenance of Wi-Fi drivers and firmware, which includes the responsibility of developing and maintaining a Dev Sanity setup. This setup is responsible for conducting release sanity and regression testing, as well as resolving Coverity issues and Jira-raised Wi-Fi-related issues. Furthermore, performance evaluation of different wireless protocols operating on 2.4 and 5GHz frequency bands, namely 802.11ax, 802.11ac, and 802.11n, is carried out. The throughput of all three protocols is calculated on MCS-0 to 11 (Modulation and Coding Scheme) with a common channel width of 20, 40, and 80 MHz. Although 160MHz bandwidth can achieve higher throughput, it is rarely used in practical urban scenarios and hence is not considered in the evaluation. Additionally, bandwidth sharing for all three protocols is simulated and analyzed using the open-source network simulator NS3. This simulator provides a precise level of observation for wireless networks and is efficiently aligned with a real-world wireless network, while also taking lesser time to set up the network. The results of the evaluation show that, for a single antenna of 5GHz band at 80MHz bandwidth, 802.11ax achieved 18% higher throughput compared to 802.11ac. At 20MHz bandwidth, 802.11ax showed a significant 50% improvement compared to 802.11ac. Moreover, 802.11ax can achieve twice as fast throughput as 802.11n at 20MHz bandwidth in the 5GHz band with a single antenna..