NXP Semiconductors UM11483 - 2 I.MX 8 M Quad Architecture; Overview

NXP Semiconductors
UM11483
Getting Started with NXP Wireless Modules for i.MX 8M-Quad Platforms
UM11483 All information provided in this document is subject to legal disclaimers. © NXP B.V. 2020. All rights reserved.
User manual Rev. 1 — 28 September 2020
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Figure 1. Platform interface between the i.MX 8M quad and NXP Wi-Fi module
2.3 Wi-Fi layer interfaces
This section details the layers between the user applications and 88W8987-based
wireless module. The wireless module requires a kernel driver loaded on the i.MX
8M Quad host system and a firmware running on 88W8987 SoC. The MLAN module
downloads the firmware binary to the SD8987 adapter when the SDIO bus driver detects
the SDIO interface of the module. The kernel driver (SD8987) is loaded between the bus
driver and the network stack from the "cfg80211" subsystem in the kernel. NXP kernel
driver includes a set of controls and configurations to communicate with the user space
through one of the following interfaces:
• Input/output control (IOCTL)
• Wireless Extension (Wext)
• CFG80211
The IOCTL provides a path to the user space applications, such as iwconfig and iwpriv
whereas cfg80211 provides a different path to the user space application, such as
wpa_supplicant, hostapd and iw.
Figure 2 illustrates the Wi-Fi layer interface.