Android support for Nitrogen6X with Murata module

Published on August 31, 2015

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Table of Contents

  1. For the impatient
  2. What's supported?
  3. Performances comparison
    1. WiFi
  4. Source code access
Nitrogen6X SBCNitrogen6X SOM

As you might have noticed, one version of our Nitrogen6X takes advantage of the Murata LBEH5DU1BW WiFi/BT combo module.https://boundarydevices.com/product/nit6q_w_bcom-quad-core-1gb-ddr3-murata-wifibt-antenna/i.MX6 Quad-Core with WiFI+BT from Murata i.MX6 Quad-Core with WiFI+BT from MurataThis module is now supported in our latest Android 5.0.0 (Lollipop) release!

For the impatient

You can download the Nit6Q_W_BCOM image from here:

As usual, you'll need to register on our site and agree to the EULA because it contains Freescale content. The image is a 4GB SD card image that can be restored using zcat and dd under Linux or Alex Page's USB Image Tool under Windows.

What's supported?

Feature-wise, the support is the same between the modules:

  • WiFi STA mode
  • WiFi Ad-Hoc mode (hotspot)
  • WiFi P2P (WiFi Direct)
  • Bluetooth 4.0
    • just like the TiWi, BLE peripheral mode isn't supported

To be noted that WiFi Direct doesn't interfere with Bluetooth at all, allowing users to use both features seamlessly.

Performances comparison

WiFi

Both tests have been running with the same iperf3 v3.0.10 binary with the exact same network configuration.

  • Murata LBEH5DU1BW
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr [ 5] 0.00-10.11 sec 24.6 MBytes 20.4 Mbits/sec 0 sender [ 5] 0.00-10.11 sec 24.4 MBytes 20.3 Mbits/sec receiver
  • LSR TiWi-BLE
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr [ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 19.3 MBytes 16.2 Mbits/sec 0 sender [ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 16.8 MBytes 14.1 Mbits/sec receiver

Source code access

The sources for this release are in the boundary-imx-l5.0.0_1.0.0-ga branch of our new android-manifest Github project.Please follow our latest release instructions to retrieve the source code. Once everything is set up properly, you just need to modify one configuration file in order to specify the use of the Murata module (TiWi BLE being the default configuration).

~/myandroid$ sed -i 's/TI/BCM/' device/boundary/nitrogen6x/wifi_config.mk
~/myandroid$ source build/envsetup.sh
~/myandroid$ lunch nitrogen6x-eng
~/myandroid$ make 2>&1 | tee build.out