Agilent's SystemVue 2009.08 Unlocks RF-DSP Co-design, Custom Flow for Model-Based Design

A key feature of SystemVue 2009.08 is a new simulation interface -- the RFlink -- which more effectively models RF transceivers and air interface for baseband designers. Available in SystemVue's optional W1719 RF System Design Kit, the RFlink bridges the gap between baseband signal processing and proven RF tools. Traditional DSP approaches either add RF block sets to limited dataflow simulators or use a brute-force analog co-simulation method that is orders of magnitude slower than DSP tools. In contrast, Agilent's automated RFlink conveniently embeds RF architectures into a baseband DSP environment, for a unified top-down team approach to system design. Using it, baseband designers can now re-use an RF system architect's own IP to see the impact of additional RF effects (e.g., internal impedance mismatch, nonlinearities and reverse propagation) within their native DSP environment, verify the robustness of their algorithms, and reduce overall design margins.

SystemVue's new RFlink feature improves the accuracy and convenience of modeling the RF portion of signal processing chains, without burdening DSP architects with clunky analog tools or requiring specialized RF expertise, said Frank Ditore, product manager of Agilent's SystemVue. By allowing the RF, system and baseband design teams to share a common environment for concurrent design, the link enables superior top-down RF-baseband partitioning and reduces overall design margins.

Enabling High-Performance Custom Model-Based Design

Another critical feature of SystemVue 2009.08 is its ability to enable a complete, end-to-end (system level to hardware) model-based design flow. This flow is made possible by allowing user-defined modeling of high-performance PHYs at multiple levels of abstraction, including C++ and math language algorithms, bit-true fixed-point models and cycle-accurate VHDL generation.

Together with easy scripting and instrument links for verification, SystemVue 2009.08 is now capable of importing and encapsulating a company's high-performance signal-processing IP flow, and verifying models at each level of abstraction -- either at the communications system level or a lower hardware level. This integration makes SystemVue a cost-effective, open, vendor-neutral platform for demanding custom applications, such as radar, software-defined radio and homeland security.

New Reference IP for Emerging Wireless PHYs

Other new features found in Agilent's SystemVue 2009.08 release are algorithmic references for emerging physical layer standards. These references allow system architects and baseband designers to verify signal processing algorithms and hardware implementation long before test equipment or commercial PHYs are available and include:

* the W1915 mmWave WPAN baseband verification library, in support of IEEE 802.15.3c;
* the W1914 DVB-S2 baseband verification library for satellite-based digital video broadcast systems, in support of the SatComm community's needs;
* formal simulator support for 3GPP LTE closed-loop throughput measurements using HARQ, based on LTE version 8.6 (March 2009); and
* application support for GPS, Galileo, ZigBee and other formats.