Android: Wifi driver integration

I started looking into Wifi driver integration into Android. Android from one and only Google..which has created a big storm in the mobile platform world. Android is basicaly combination of Linux kernel with Java stack. It has got cutstomoized and optmized libc (bionic) and java virtual machine (Dalvik).

Wifi conifiguration in Android starts from Java application and goes till driver/firmware insertion through JNI interface and wifi native component. Before starting modification for these components, I wanted to verify whether Wifi driver for my target will work under Android or not.

wpa_supplicant component was not enabled by default in android 1.0 release. So to enable
Add HAVE_CUSTOM_WIFI_DRIVER_2 := true to build/target/board/generic/BoardConfig.mk file.


2. make sure external/wpa_supplicant/.config has got below entries

CONFIG_WIRELESS_EXTENSION=y

CONFIG_CTRL_IFACE=y

CONFIG_DRIVER_WEXT=y
3. Build android with this to get support for WEXT and wpa_supplicant client.

4. After the system boot, insert driver and know the interface (in my case it is eth1)

5. Modify wpa_supplicant.conf file for AP configuration and Run

/system/bin/wpa_supplicant -Dwext -ieth1 -c/sdcard/wpa_supplicant.conf

6. Run dhcp to get the IP/system/bin/dhcpcd -d eth1

7. Ping to AP to check connectivity.

To automate these steps, put above commands for wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd in init.rc.

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