• Balaji Pothunoori's avatar
    cfg80211: average ack rssi support for data frames · 81d5439d
    Balaji Pothunoori authored
    Average ack rssi will be given to userspace via NL80211 interface
    if firmware is capable. Userspace tool ‘iw’ can process this
    information and give the output as one of the fields in
    ‘iw dev wlanX station dump’.
    
    Example output :
    
    localhost ~ #iw dev wlan-5000mhz station dump Station
    34:f3:9a:aa:3b:29 (on wlan-5000mhz)
            inactive time:  5370 ms
            rx bytes:       85321
            rx packets:     576
            tx bytes:       14225
            tx packets:     71
            tx retries:     0
            tx failed:      2
            beacon loss:    0
            rx drop misc:   0
            signal:         -54 dBm
            signal avg:     -53 dBm
            tx bitrate:     866.7 MBit/s VHT-MCS 9 80MHz short GI VHT-NSS 2
            rx bitrate:     866.7 MBit/s VHT-MCS 9 80MHz short GI VHT-NSS 2
            avg ack signal: -56 dBm
            authorized:     yes
            authenticated:  yes
            associated:     yes
            preamble:       short
            WMM/WME:        yes
            MFP:            no
            TDLS peer:      no
            DTIM period:    2
            beacon interval:100
           short preamble: yes
           short slot time:yes
           connected time: 203 seconds
    
    Main use case is to measure the signal strength of a connected station
    to AP. Data packet transmit rates and bandwidth used by station can vary
    a lot even if the station is at fixed location, especially if the rates
    used are multi stream(2stream, 3stream) rates with different bandwidth(20/40/80 Mhz).
    These multi stream rates are sensitive and station can use different transmit power
    for each of the rate and bandwidth combinations. RSSI measured from these RX packets
    on AP will be not stable and can vary a lot with in a short time.
    Whereas 802.11 ack frames from station are sent relatively at a constant
    rate (6/12/24 Mbps) with constant bandwidth(20 Mhz).
    So average rssi of the ack packets is good and more accurate.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarBalaji Pothunoori <bpothuno@codeaurora.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarJohannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com>
    81d5439d
nl80211.c 416 KB