ath9k: use AP beacon miss as a trigger for fast recalibration

When beacons get stuck in AP mode, the most likely cause is interference.
Such interference can often go on for a while, and too many consecutive
beacon misses can lead to connected clients getting dropped.

Since connected clients might not be subjected to the same interference
if that happens to be very local, the AP should try to deal with it as
good as it can. One way to do this is to trigger an NF calibration with
automatic baseband update right after the beacon miss. In my tests with
very strong interference, this allowed the AP to continue transmitting
beacons after only 2-3 misses, which allows a normal client to stay
connected.

With some of the newer - really sensitive - chips, the maximum noise
floor limit is very low, which can be problematic during very strong
interference. To avoid an endless loop of stuck beacons -> nfcal ->
periodic calibration -> stuck beacons, the beacon miss event also sets
a flag, which allows the calibration code to bypass the chip specific
maximum NF value. This flag is automatically cleared, as soon as the
first NF median goes back below the limits for all chains.

In my tests, this allowed an ath9k AP to survive very strong interference
(measured NF: -68, or sometimes even higher) without losing connectivity
to its clients. Even under these conditions, I was able to transmit
several mbits/s through the interface.

Signed-off-by: Felix Fietkau <nbd@openwrt.org>
Signed-off-by: John W. Linville <linville@tuxdriver.com>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/calib.h b/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/calib.h
index 0a304b3eeeb6..5b053a6260b2 100644
--- a/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/calib.h
+++ b/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/calib.h
@@ -113,6 +113,7 @@ void ath9k_hw_loadnf(struct ath_hw *ah, struct ath9k_channel *chan);
 bool ath9k_hw_getnf(struct ath_hw *ah, struct ath9k_channel *chan);
 void ath9k_init_nfcal_hist_buffer(struct ath_hw *ah,
 				  struct ath9k_channel *chan);
+void ath9k_hw_bstuck_nfcal(struct ath_hw *ah);
 s16 ath9k_hw_getchan_noise(struct ath_hw *ah, struct ath9k_channel *chan);
 void ath9k_hw_reset_calibration(struct ath_hw *ah,
 				struct ath9k_cal_list *currCal);