Cellular modems on i.MX6 boards under Ubuntu

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This post is about adding cellular modem support on the Boundary Devices i.MX6 boards under Ubuntu.  Many customers have requested cellular modem support on our i.MX6 boards (BD-SL-i.MX6, Nitrogen6X, Nitrogen6_Lite and Nitrogen6_MAX).  Since most cell modems are USB or PCIe devices, configuration is a software task, and mostly done in userspace. The steps are also different for Android, embedded Linux and desktop distributions.  In other words, its complicated.

In this post, we’ll walk through all of the steps needed to configure a specific set of modems under Ubuntu as a reference. If you’re using another modem or another userspace, the details may be different, but the fundamentals will be the same.

We used the Huawei E3131 USB dongle , and Huawei MU609 Mini-PCIe during this process, and will be adding them to our default kernels going forward.

As you can see in this patch, we did have to add some USB device ids and make minor updates to the kernel as provided by the vendor. In the process, we should now also support the following Huawei models for various regions and carriers:

• MC323   CDMA: Downlink:153.6 kbps, Uplink: 153.6 kbps
• MU509   WDCMA: Downlink:3.6 Mbps, Uplink: 384 kbps
• MC509   EVDO: Downlink:3.1 Mbps, Uplink: 1.8 Mbps
• MU609   HSPA+: Downlink:14.4 Mbps, Uplink: 5.76 Mbps
• MU709   HSPA+: Downlink:21.6 Mbps, Uplink: 5.76 Mbps
• ME906   LTE: Downlink:100 Mbps, Uplink: 50 Mbps
• ME909   LTE: Downlink:100 Mbps, Uplink: 50 Mbps
• ME936   LTE: Downlink:100 Mbps, Uplink: 50 Mbps

For more details including links to images as well as detailed descriptions on how to implement, please visit this blog post:  http://boundarydevices.com/cellular-modems-on-i-mx6-boards/