CC3100 Transceiver Mode ACK

Hi Larry,

If you are using the transceiver mode you will have to identify the packet and send the response in the application code.

Regards,
Ankur

Ankur,

Just to be clear, when I say "802.11 ACK frame" I am referring to the small (14 byte) control frame, subtype=ACK, sent to acknowledge successful receipt of a data frame. The receiver of a (non-broadcact) data frame has a very short window to transmit the ACK. This typically occurs immediately after the SIFS interval (10 microseconds), and must occur before the expiration of the DIFS interval (50 uS for 802.11b, 28 uS for 802.11g, if I recall correctly).

This very short time interval effectively precludes the ACK frame being generated by my application code, which communicates with the CC3100 over an SPI interface. (In fact, the application code doesn't even receive the data frame from the CC3100 before the DIFS interval has expired.)

FYI, I have tried doing exactly what you suggest and have found that the application-generated ACK is not sent until the sending station has already timed out waiting for the ACK and is on it's third or fourth retry. Even then, since this application-generated ACK frame isn't in the required timing window, it is ignored by the sending station.

Clearly the CC3100 properly sends ACK frames in non-transceiver modes. My question is how to enable that functionality in transceiver mode, so that the CC3100 will properly acknowledge frames sent to it.

Thanks,
- Larry

Hi Larry,

In transceiver mode we can't configure the device to send the '802.11 ACK frame' automatically.

Regards,
ANkur