Using the 802.11 Reference Design: STA Application

STA User IO

Hex Displays: the STA uses the hex displays to show the node's current association ID (AID) as assigned by the AP during the association handshake. The displays will change in real time as the station joins and leaves networks. The displays will show 00 when the STA is not associated with an AP (0 is not a valid AID).

DIP Switch: the STA uses the left-most switch to enable or disable active scan for wireless networks on at boot. When the switch is up the STA will not attempt to join the default SSID at boot. The STA can still be associated with an AP via wlan_exp commands. This mode is very useful for running experiments with networks of WARP nodes (some AP, some STA) without allowing associations from non-WARP devices.

STA UART

Refer to the UART usage page for an overview of how the 802.11 design uses the UART cores on each CPU.

The normal UART output on boot of the AP application is:

----- Mango 802.11 Reference Design -----
----- v1.0 ------------------------------
----- wlan_mac_sta ----------------------

< High Framework Boot Messages - See Above >

WLAN MAC Station boot complete:
  Default SSID : WARP-AP
  Channel      : 1
  MAC Addr     : 40-D8-55-04-21-4A

Press the Esc key in your terminal to access the UART menu

The STA boot message indicates the SSID it searches for by default (WARP-AP) and the node's wireless MAC address (40-D8-55-04-21-4A here).

The STA application implements a simple UART menu, accessed by hitting ESC key:

********************** Station Menu **********************
[1] - Interactive Station Status
[2] - Print all Observed Statistics

[a] -   display BSS information
[r/R] - change unicast rate

Option 1 will show a sub-menu with a command to reset all Tx/Rx statistics.

Option 2 will print the Tx/Rx statistics for all traffic at the STA.

Option a will print the list of wireless networks the STA has discovered during its active scan.