This section details the partitioning of the networking stack and the IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi® stack across the host Microcontroller Unit (MCU) and nRF7000.

This description is based on the Zephyr™ networking stack and an nRF9160 host MCU. However, the partitioning applies equally to other operating systems and host MCUs supporting a compatible Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI)/Quad Serial Peripheral Interface (QSPI).

Figure 1. Network stack architecture
Page-1 Sheet.30 nRF7000 nRF7000 Sheet.11 Host MCU (nRF9160) Host MCU (nRF9160) Sheet.6 802.11 MAC 802.11 MAC Sheet.9 MAC Interface / HAL MAC Interface / HAL Sheet.10 Sheet.14 Control IF Control IF Sheet.18 Application layer protocols Application layer protocols Sheet.19 Network Management API Network Management API Sheet.20 Sheet.21 Wi-Fi host stack Wi-Fi host stack Sheet.27 Network stack Network stack Sheet.32 802.11 PHY 802.11 PHY Dynamic connector Sheet.34 SPI SPI Sheet.37 Sheet.38 Wi-Fi baseband Wi-Fi baseband

The Wi-Fi driver executes on the host MCU (for example, nRF9160) and communicates with the MAC layer on nRF7000 through SPI.