Recent Broadcom WiFi 6E/7 BCM43XX SoCs feature a dedicated Scan Core. It can be found on several modern smartphones, i.a. Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, S22 variations, Google Pixel 7 / 7 Pro, and Google Pixel 8 / 8 Pro. The Scan Core is advertised as a 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz channel performance enhancement, but the real technical properties are not publicly available. In this work, we perform an extensive analysis of the Scan Core's functionalities in- and outside of its intended use. Therefore, we make use of static and dynamic reverse engineering of related soft- and hardware components. A detailed understanding of the Scan Core's internals and peripherals possibly provides a new platform for research applications on WiFi SoCs that can run in parallel to default WiFi operation.
Nov 2023
Completed