Co-simulation of Matlab/Simulink with AMS designer in system-on-chip design
Abstract
With increasing complexity of Systems-on-Chips (SoC), system level design and simulation is a necessity. In an ideal top-down design flow, the system level model is used as executable specification for the block implementation, which is supported by mixed-signal simulators. This contribution describes a link between the system-level simulator MATLAB/Simulink and mixed-signal simulation in Virtuoso AMS Designer by a socket based co-simulation. The implementation of the co-simulation is described in detail, including user interface, protocol, synchronization and cross-platform support. The application of the co-simulation is illustrated by a wireless LAN system. While the RF subsystem of the WLAN receiver is modeled in Virtuoso AMS Designer, Simulink provides standard compliant testbenches and adequate visualization tools. The presented simulator coupling, as a special case of distributed simulation, provides a functional parallelization of the involved tools.
