EVK-LILY-W1 - User Guide
UBX-15030290 - R04
Software
Page 13 of 25
4
Software
The LILY-W1 module series is based on the Marvell Avastar 88W8801 chipset and it supports Wi-Fi
802.11b/g/n simultaneous client/station, access point, and Wi-Fi Direct operations.
The LILY-W1 modules connect to the host processor either through an SDIO 2.0 or USB 2.0 device
interface.
From the software point of view, the LILY-W1 series modules contain only calibration data and basic
operation settings in an on-board non-volatile memory and thus require a host-side driver and a
firmware to run. Each base software package contains the following:
•
A firmware image that has to be downloaded to the module on system start
•
A driver, which is placed between the bus driver and the attached network stacks
Various control tools are also included optionally.
4.1
Driver versions
Marvell reference drivers for the LILY-W1 series modules are currently available for Linux and Android
operating systems as SDIO or USB driver versions. The drivers are usually released for a single
reference host platform and operating system version, but can be easily ported to comparable
platforms. It is recommended to use the latest available host interface driver version and port this to
the used operating system version.
⚠
The Software section of this manual describes only the Marvell reference drivers, which can be
obtained through u-blox support. The “mwifiex” open source drivers that are distributed with the
Linux kernel are not officially supported by u-blox.
☞
Refer to the Release Notes that is bundled with each driver release for a list of supported driver
features.
4.2
Driver and firmware architecture
The software for the LILY-W1 modules is split into the following parts:
•
The Wi-Fi driver, running on the host system
•
The device firmware, which runs on the module itself
The host drivers interface with the SDIO or USB bus drivers and upper layer protocol stacks of the
Linux/Android system. The basic architecture of the Wi-Fi driver is typical of a thick firmware
architecture, where the Wi-Fi firmware handles all 802.11 MAC management tasks. Figure 8 shows
the basic driver and firmware architecture.
The following steps are performed while loading the Wi-Fi host driver:
•
The driver registers itself with the MMC/SDIO or USB bus driver.
•
Upon successful registration, the bus driver calls the Wi-Fi driver's probe handler, when the module
is detected.
•
The probe handler allocates and initializes internal structures, registers the interrupt service
routine and starts the main driver threads.
•
The firmware image is downloaded to the module and the hardware is initialized.
•
Network devices such as STA, AP, and WFD are registered.
