Espressif Prepares for ESP32-E22 General Availability with Wi-Fi 6E Certification, Open Linux Driver
Early-stage driver, lacking some key features, is available now under a permissive license — but you still can't buy the chip.
Espressif has announced the release of early open source drivers for using its new ESP32-E22 Wi-Fi module with a Linux host — following its official certification by the Wi-Fi Alliance as being a standards-compliant Wi-Fi 6E implementation.
"Wi-Fi Alliance certification verifies a product's compliance with Wi-Fi standards and its interoperability with other certified devices," Espressif explains of the milestone. "For the ESP32-E22, it means reliable connectivity with the large global ecosystem of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED devices and confident deployment at scale. As Wi-Fi 6E adoption continues to grow across consumer electronics, smart homes, industrial equipment, and enterprise networks, formal certification further strengthens customer confidence in product compatibility and long-term availability."
The ESP32-E22 was announced back in January as the company's first wireless microcontroller with tri-band Wi-Fi connectivity. While many ESP32-family chips come with 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, and some with both 2.4GHz and 5GHz, the ESP32-E22 includes a third 6GHz band for shorter-range higher-throughput workloads. Using the full 160MHz channel bandwidth in a 2×2 multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) configuration, Espressif claims this delivers a peak data rate of 2.4Gb/s — supported by the inclusion of two 32-bit RISC-V cores running at 500MHz.
Despite those powerful processor cores, the ESP32-E22 isn't designed to act on its own; Espressif envisions the chip as being a communications coprocessor to a more powerful host, and to that end has released open source drivers for Linux version 5.4 and above. "The driver enables device manufacturers and system developers to integrate the ESP32-E22 into a wide range of host systems," the company says. "Developers can evaluate, customize, and extend the open-source code, lowering the barrier to development and accelerating the path from product design to mass production."
The Wi-Fi 6E certification can be viewed on the Wi-Fi Alliance website, while the driver is available on GitHub under the permissive Apache 2.0 license — though, at the time of writing, does not yet support some key features including AP operation, STA operation over an SDIO interface, suspend/resume, and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth coexistence, all of which are planned for a future release.
Those interested in sampling the ESP32-E22, which has yet to enter general availability, are advised to contact Espressif directly.