I'm trying to set up a Wi-Fi repeater on Ubuntu PC or embedded Linux with Wi-Fi dongles, using one dongle at a time. Drivers and firmwares for dongles are done and worked on my PC/embedded board for AP mode and station mode. Then what can I do next?
In my thought, I have to simulate 2 interfaces with only 1 dongle. Than run Hostapd on a interface, run wpa_supplicant on another interface. Is that a workable method? If yes, how can I "create" 2 interface with 1 dongle, say, wlan0/wlan1 or wlan0.1/wlan0.2 or something like that?
Is the whole scenario workable just through some operation about interface and system, or the scenario MUST be supported by driver of dongles, if driver doesn't provide this scenario, then it is impossible?
I tried it on Ralink Soc before(it's called ap-client mode by Ralink). On Ralink platform with its own SDK including Linux source and Wi-Fi drivers, it is done by iwpriv commands. There are interfaces call "apcli0" to work in station mode and "ra0" work in AP mode, but there is only 1 physical Wi-Fi interface built-in in Ralink Soc. It works just fine but I'm not using Ralink Soc now. Is that feature also available for other dongles?
After working on driver compiling, I got some idea. The chip I'm using supports "dual mac" feature, and the driver must support this feature. If the driver is successfully compiled, inserted and the dongle is plugged in, there will be 2 interfaces coming out, for example, wlan0 and wlan1. Therefore I can configure one interface as AP and another interface as station. So the key point is the chip and driver must support dual mac feature.