Ultra96-V2 low Wifi download speed

Question

Using custom firmware or precompiled petalinux firmware of different versions, in all cases I got a low download speed (maximum 500 kb/s) with Ultra96-V2 access point mode (by default in precompiled firmware). Did anyone else have a problem with Wifi speed to atwillc3000 and is there any way to solve the problem?

bhfletcher · Answer

I may be using a later release with a newer driver, but I am seeing much higher performance than this using an iPerf example from narrucmot. Perhaps he can share more details as to what has recently changed.

Bryan

bobtek · Answer

I am getting about the same throughput. I connected via direct access (P2P) and tested by FTP'ing a large file. Got the following:

1) upload - 1.06 Mbytes/s

2) download - 451 kbytes/s

connecting via my local access point:

1) upload - 1.42 Mbytes/sec

2) download - 828 kbytes/sec

The ATWILC3000 data sheet lists the max PHY rate of 72 Mbps.

When my computer connected to the Ultra96-v2 board in direct mode, I noticed it was using the 802.11b/g PHY Mode (54Mbps).

The SDIO interface is running at 4-bit mode, 50 MHz, so shouldn't be a limitation. I would expect we should be getting ~3Mbytes/s throughput.

Since I got better results when connecting via my local AP, it may be that the WiFi Direct P2P software is a bottleneck. Also, I might be wrong, but I seem to remember seeing that WiFi direct mode could only connect to devices at 802.11b speeds (11Mbps). It might be worth trying hostapd to see if we get better performance.

Bob

bobtek · Answer

From the Microchip product page:

The ATWILC3000 supports single stream 1x1 802.11n mode providing tested throughput of up to 46 Mbps UDP & 28 Mbps TCP/IP.

I don't have an Ultra96-v1 board but it used the TI WL1831MOD WiFi module. It would be interesting to see what the performance of that was.

Bob

bhfletcher · Answer

I followed instructions from narrucmot to run iperf3 tests in both Client and Server modes. These results are captured in the latest Getting Started Guide, which you can find here:

Updated 2020.1 Out-of-Box image and Getting Started Guide

Server Test (Figure 26 in the GSG)

31.6 Mbits/sec as receiver

Client Test (Figure 29 in the GSG)

9.31 Mbits/sec as senderr
9.11 Mbits/sec as receiver

I think the biggest difference is that the latest builds have updated to a newer driver.

Bryan

Ultra96-V2 low Wifi download speed

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