MATLAB as a Design and Verification Tool for the Hardware Prototyping of Wireless Communication Systems

Abstract

The ability to verify the capacity gains of novel signal processing techniques or the performance of new communication standards is one of the main research and development drivers of both academic and industrial entities. In this context, the signal processing community has adopted MATLAB as a flexible modelling, simulating and testing software development environment. MATLAB includes numerous toolboxes, open-source code and pre-compiled libraries, which facilitate the design of complex systems using high-level models and provides the means for rapid verification of signal processing algorithms and systems in a user-controlled environment. The growing number of its add-on features allows MATLAB to fill the gap between these high-level models and the physical implementation of systems; e.g., a real-time Field Programmable Array (FPGA)-based prototype. Moreover, the functionality of MATLAB is significantly extended with the use of Simulink [1], which serves as a schematic-entry design and programming environment. The integration of the System Generator blockset of Xilinx [2] to Simulink and the direct linking of the latter with the Xilinx FPGA-design toolchain enriches the target use-cases of the software. This approach allows the creation of FPGA binary executables from high-level models. MATLAB is also one of the most popular software-modelling environments, whose functionality is commonly interfaced nowadays with instruments to provide connectivity, control and programming solutions for rapid prototyping and testing. In fact, MATLAB scripts are increasingly used to program a wide variety of testing, signal generation and signal analysis hardware instruments. Thus, the programming versatility of MATLAB allows it to be used as a key software component in complex testbeds, which comprise a multitude of software programming interfaces and heterogeneous hardware instruments. The role of such testbeds is crucial because they enable the prototyping and validation of advanced research concepts under realistic conditions,