WiFi Channel State Information on Jetson Nano using Edimax/Intel 8265

Autonomous Machines Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson Nano
#1

Hello everyone,
I am working on a project, where I need to extract information about the WiFi channel that the device is connected to. I have access to both the Edimax USB WiFi dongle, as well as the Intel 8265 card compatible with the Jetson Nano and I can connect to the WiFi networks without any issues.
My issues is that standard CLI based diagnostic commands like

ifconfig
nmcli d wifi list

only offer limited information about the channel. Using something like this, gives much more details about the WiFi channel than the typical commands I listed above, for instance please refer to the image below:
Intel 5300 card CSI frame

The problem is that these linux tools are compatible with only Intel 5300 card, some select Atheros cards as well, none of which are in a compatible cards list for the Jetson Nano.

I would appreciate any insight into how I can capture this kind of channel information on the Jetson Nano with the Edimax dongle or the Intel 8265 card.

Thanks and regards,
Vinay

#3

Hi Vinaypra! I am also working on a similar project. Were you able to install the default drivers for the 5300 card on the nano? The only solution might be to modify the driver to make it work on newer kernels if you want to stick to intel 5300. As far as I know other than the WiFi cards that you mentioned, there aren’t any that expose the CSI information. There is the nexmon CSI toolbox which works with RPi and some other boards (e.g UP squared) if you don’t need to stick to Nano. Let me know if you come across any new updates.

#4

I wasn’t able to install the drivers for the Intel 5300 cards on the Jetson Nano. The folks who modified the firmware for the Linux CSI tools earlier were able to do it because they worked with Intel on this. Meaning it was all closed source development. Also, I am not proficient enough to develop/modify the required firmware for this card on my own.
The only possible solution so far is to look through the documentation of the Intel 8265 card and its firmware files to to identify the function/or process that makes a call to the CSI header frame and stores it somewhere in the memory. If the firmware allows us to parse this memory, without corrupting the frame, we may be able to extract that data.
Regarding the WiFi chips not exposing the CSI information, I am not 100% sure, but I think that’s what the research group who developed Nexmon did. In their case, the call to the function would corrupt the frame, so they had to access the physical table that stored the CSI information using the another controller.
For the moment though, I have switched to a couple of older laptops and plugged in the Atheros and Intel 5300 cards with the correct kernels to get the Intel and Atheros CSI tools to work for now.

#5

@jadhavhninad I found this CSI tool, that might be of help to both of us WiFi ESP32 CSI tool The only thing left to set up is the UART connection with the Jetson Nano. Let me know what you think.