for the WB195 combo NIC - an AR9285 w/ an AR3011 USB bluetooth NIC.
The AR3011 is wired up using a 3-wire coexistence scheme to the AR9285.
The code in if_ath_btcoex.c sets up the initial hardware mapping
and coexistence configuration. There's nothing special about it -
it's static; it doesn't try to configure bluetooth / MAC traffic priorities
or try to figure out what's actually going on. It's enough to stop basic
bluetooth traffic from causing traffic stalls and diassociation from
the wireless network.
To use this code, you must have the above NIC. No, it won't work
for the AR9287+AR3012, nor the AR9485, AR9462 or AR955x combo cards.
Then you set a kernel hint before boot or before kldload, where 'X'
is the unit number of your AR9285 NIC:
# kenv hint.ath.X.btcoex_profile=wb195
This will then appear in your boot messages:
[100482] athX: Enabling WB195 BTCOEX
This code is going to evolve pretty quickly (well, depending upon my
spare time) so don't assume the btcoex API is going to stay stable.
In order to use the bluetooth side, you must also load in firmware using
ath3kfw and the binary firmware file (ath3k-1.fw in my case.)
Tested:
* AR9280, no interference
* WB195 - AR9285 + AR3011 combo; STA mode; basic bluetooth inquiries
were enough to cause traffic stalls and disassociations. This has
stopped with the btcoex profile code.
TODO:
* Importantly - the AR9285 needs ASPM disabled if bluetooth coexistence
is enabled. No, I don't know why. It's likely some kind of bug to do
with the AR3011 sending bluetooth coexistence signals whilst the device
is asleep. Since we don't actually sleep the MAC just yet, it shouldn't
be a problem. That said, to be totally correct:
+ ASPM should be disabled - upon attach and wakeup
+ The PCIe powersave HAL code should never be called
Look at what the ath9k driver does for inspiration.
* Add WB197 (AR9287+AR3012) support
* Add support for the AR9485, which is another combo like the AR9285
* The later NICs have a different signaling mechanism between the MAC
and the bluetooth device; I haven't even begun to experiment with
making that HAL code work. But it should be a lot more automatic.
* The hardware can do much more interesting traffic weighting with
bluetooth and wifi traffic. None of this is currently used.
Ideally someone would code up something to watch the bluetooth traffic
GPIO (via an interrupt) and then watch it go high/low; then figure out
what the bluetooth traffic is and adjust things appropriately.
* If I get the time I may add in some code to at least track this stuff
and expose statistics. But it's up to someone else to experiment with
the bluetooth coexistence support and add the interesting stuff (like
"real" detection of bulk, audio, etc bluetooth traffic patterns and
change wifi parameters appropriately - eg, maximum aggregate length,
transmit power, using quiet time to control TX duty cycle, etc.)
