WiFi Dongle Basic Concept

The WLAN software package contains the dongle host driver for the host, a downloadable binary image for WLAN dongle, and management utilities.

The wireless driver runs on the WLAN dongle. The SDIO host controller passes IEEE 802.3 packets, and the necessary control packets, back and forth over the SDIO bus. A special Broadcom Device Class protocol is used to encapsulate control packets on a separate logical control channel and to add packet information to the data channel.

The advantage of using the dongle concept is that the wireless driver is executed externally from a host device, which means the host device does not have to use CPU or memory resources in order to execute the wireless driver’s functionality. The use of the dongle provides the following benefits to the host:
  • Power savings
  • A reduction in driver size and complexity
  • Processor offloading for activities such as checksum calculation and Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) execution