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WFB-ng

  • Software
  • Drones and boats
  • Tool

A long-range packet radio link that runs over raw WiFi radio, carrying UDP-style data such as video, MAVLink telemetry, and IP traffic between a drone and a ground station.

Source on GitHub: github.com/svpcom/wfb-ng (opens in a new tab). Facts read at commit e085fac (opens in a new tab).

Licenses

Code
GPL-3.0-only (opens in a new tab)

Read by Robotheca from LICENSE.txt (opens in a new tab) (GPL-3.0-only) at commit e085fac (opens in a new tab), on 16 Oct 2026.

Commercial use
Yes

Copyleft: Modified source must be published.

What it does

  • Maps RTP and other UDP packets one-to-one onto WiFi packets to keep latency low.
  • Uses forward error correction so lost packets can be recovered, by default up to 4 lost packets per 12-packet block.
  • Provides bidirectional MAVLink telemetry and an IPv4 tunnel for general traffic.
  • Encrypts and authenticates the stream with libsodium.
  • Selects the transmit card automatically based on received signal strength, and can spread work across cards on several hosts.
  • Supports dynamic FEC and modulation changes without interrupting the link, plus full channel state logging.

Written by Robotheca from the project's README (opens in a new tab) at commit e085fac.

Getting started

Difficulty
Advanced
Hardware it needs, as the project states it
Supported WiFi cards are RTL8812au and RTL8812eu, which need an external patched driver, and Atheros AR9350, which needs kernel patches to control TX power. Runs on Linux with kernel 4.x or newer and a USB port, on arm32v7, arm64v8, amd64, mips64le, s390x, ppc64le and i386.

Maintenance

Status
Active: a commit in the last 90 days
Newest commit
15 Oct 2026 on master
Latest release
Release 25.01.2 (26 Feb 2026)

Checked on GitHub on 16 Oct 2026.

Links

Robots on Robotheca that use it

No robot on Robotheca is linked to it yet. Links come from a robot's robot.yaml, from its dependency files read as text, or from Robotheca's editors.

Robotheca lists software as a reference: nothing is hosted or run here, and every fact links to where it was read.