WiFi modules only doing PHY and Data Link Layer

Question

Problem Statement: Need a WiFi module that implements just "Data Link Layer Protocol" after taking in data serially.

I am trying to implement all the stacks(Application Layer, Transport Layer and Network Layer) except for the Data Link Layer. All I want is to test my implementation by sending some data over the internet. Therefore I require a WiFi module which can serially take in data and add data-link-protocol- header to it and just transmit it over the WiFi channel.

All I found online was complete stack implementations. Also, if there is a way to do what I want with a device like ESP8266, kindly help.

Answer 1

You've obviously been looking in the wrong places.

All non-standalone Wifi chipsets (like, the one in your smartphone or laptop or router) only do the physical modulation, demodulation, and a bit of the data link layer (namely, medium access control (MAC), simply because you must do that in hardware that's very close to the physical layer and low-latency).

Data-link-layer packeting is usually mainly done by software. There's no reason to do it in hardware. (aside from a bit of checksum checking on rx packets, usually).

So, get a laptop or a USB WiFi adapter, and instruct your OS to send raw IEEE802.11 frames. There's no magic happening here, it's what your computer does all the time.

The ESP82xx is a bit special in that it actually packages the minimal network stack/operating system and the WiFi handling in one firmware, which offers a simple interface to the embedded peripherals using it. That comes with quite a bit of downsides, but in essence, you can also write ESP firmware that does what you want; you simply haven't looked closely enough.