The fix was surgical: rewrite the GetStationList() shim to cache station data. A separate thread would refresh the cache every 500ms via nl80211 async dumps. The HAL call would simply copy from the cache – a 100µs operation. By day 25, the system was stable. The TR-181 parameters synchronized. The web UI showed "Qualcomm Wi-Fi 6E" instead of "Broadcom." Even Axiom's proprietary cloud analytics (via TR-069) accepted the chip's RSSI values.
// libHalBridge: Translating Broadcom-style sync calls to nl80211 async int WIFI_HAL_TriggerScan_Shim(char *interface, int freq_list[]) { // Step 1: Convert RDK-B params to nl80211 scan request struct nl_msg *msg = nl80211_cmd_alloc(interface, NL80211_CMD_TRIGGER_SCAN); nla_put_u32(msg, NL80211_ATTR_SCAN_FLAGS, NL80211_SCAN_FLAG_AP); // Step 2: Send async, but block using a conditional variable pthread_mutex_lock(&scan_mutex); scan_complete = 0; nl80211_send(msg);
, the log screamed.
// Step 3: Wait for NL80211_CMD_SCAN_ABORTED or NL80211_CMD_NEW_SCAN_RESULTS while (!scan_complete) { pthread_cond_wait(&scan_cond, &scan_mutex); } pthread_mutex_unlock(&scan_mutex);
Mira made a call: rewrite the steering logic. She stripped out the Broadcom-specific calls and replaced them with a generic nl80211 RRM interface. For two weeks, she lived inside the 802.11 spec, implementing neighbor reports and BTM requests from scratch. On day eighteen, the gateway booted. Both radios (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) came up. Clients associated. But after 45 minutes, the Wi-Fi would lock up. No ping, no probe responses. The QCA SoC was alive (LED blinking), but RDK-B had lost its mind. rdk-b integration with non-native wi-fi socs
Mira’s strategy was brutal but necessary: build a – a translation library they called "LibHalBridge."
"We can't just kill -HUP ," Sam groaned. "We have to serialize TR-181 parameters into D-Bus method calls." The fix was surgical: rewrite the GetStationList() shim
After the talk, a Qualcomm architect approached her. "You basically re-invented our internal qca-rdk-adapter ," he said, smiling. "But yours works better."