Re: [Madwifi-users] HAL Transmit Power

[Sebastian W. <to...@to...>]

> Could someone please indicate what transmission power
> the HAL sets?
>
> I ask because of weak signal strength from a DWL-G520,
> as reported by Netstumbler compared to another
> DWL-G520 on a Windows machine using Atheros drivers.
>
> iwlist reports madwifi-bsd (latest CVS) as having a
> transmit power of 20mW, which is too weak to use with
> hostapd.
>
> The Windows Atheros driver provides settings for 10
> mW, 20mW, 30mW, 50mW, 63 mW and 100 mW.
>
> Assuming that these settings are legal, seeing as they
> come from Atheros, shouldn't they be user-selectable?

They should be, I think. The Problem is that the hal does its own 
things with the txpower values supplied by the wireless tools. I got a 
powermeter for testing now and I will try to calibrate the settings. At 
the moment setting iwconfig ath0 txpower 100mW is doing something with 
the power, but it doesnt sets it to 100mW txpower.


A first strange thing I observed is that the powermeter never goes 
beyond -4dBm, independent of any txpower values set and independent of 
2.4ghz and 5.5Ghz range. I expected values around 10-14dBm on my 
powermeter.

Has anyone experience with powermetering wlan equipment? I use the 
Rohde & Schwarz FSH3 handheld spectrum analyzer with the powersensor 
R&S FSH-Z1 (up to 8Ghz measurement). Do I have to convert the given 
result to match my device's output power?


-- 
Regards,
Sebastian Weitzel