ATHEROS SUPERAG(9)

✨ Atheros SuperAG ✨

Okay bestie, welcome to the Atheros SuperAG(9) page from the Kernel API Manual 💅✨ This one is all about making Wi-Fi go faster, and it is giving "we have so many turbo buttons" energy.

So besides XR, there's another modulation scheme called TURBO mode. It's supposed to provide a throughput transmission speed up to 40Mbit/s -60Mbit/s at a 108Mbit/s signaling rate, achieved through the bonding of two 54Mbit/s 802.11g channels. To use this feature, both ends must support it. No cap, it's a two-party situation 🫶

There's also a distinction between "static" and "dynamic" turbo modes:

• Static — the dumb version: devices set to this mode stick to it until the mode is turned off. No thoughts, head empty, just turbo 🫠
• Dynamic — the intelligent version: the network decides itself if it is ok to use turbo. As soon as traffic is detected on adjacent channels (which would get used in turbo mode), or when a non-turbo station joins the network, turbo mode won't be used until the situation changes again. Dynamic mode is achieved by Atheros' Adaptive Radio (AR) feature, which monitors the used radio band in order to decide whether turbo mode may be used or not. Lowkey the network is doing its own vibe check 💅

This article claims Super G sticks to bonding of channels 5 and 6 for USA:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/id,113428-page,1/article.html

The channel bonding seems to be driver specific though 👀

In addition to TURBO modes, we also have the following features for even greater speed-up:

• Bursting — allows multiple frames to be sent at once, rather than pausing after each frame. Bursting is a standards-compliant feature that can be used with any Access Point. Slay, standards-compliant and universally invited ✨
• Fast frames — increases the amount of information that can be sent per frame, also resulting in a reduction of transmission overhead. It is a proprietary feature that needs to be supported by the Access Point. So check your AP before you get too excited 🎀
• Compression — data frames are compressed in real time using a Lempel Ziv algorithm. This is done transparently. Once this feature is enabled, compression and decompression takes place inside the chipset, without putting additional load on the host CPU. Iconic: the chipset does the work, your CPU stays unbothered 💅

As with XR, we also don't plan to support SuperAG features for now. You can get a mode similar to TURBO by using 40MHz bwmode 🌈

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

Kernel file ./drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath5k/ath5k.h enum — the whole squad is here:

• ath5k_version(9)
• enum ath5k_radio(9)
• Atheros XR(9)
• enum ath5k_driver_mode(9)
• enum ath5k_ant_mode(9)
• enum ath5k_bw_mode(9)
• struct ath5k_tx_status(9)
• enum ath5k_tx_queue(9)
• enum ath5k_tx_queue_subtype(9)
• enum ath5k_tx_queue_id(9)
• struct ath5k_txq(9)
• struct ath5k_txq_info(9)
• enum ath5k_pkt_type(9)
• struct ath5k_rx_status(9)
• enum ath5k_rfgain(9)
• struct ath5k_gain(9)
• struct ath5k_athchan_2ghz(9)
• enum ath5k_dmasize(9)
• Rate codes(9)
• enum ath5k_int(9)
• enum ath5k_calibration_mask(9)
• enum ath5k_power_mode(9)

xoxo, source/version: ./drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath5k, date: October 2026, manual: Atheros SuperAG(9) 🫶💖