Bridging Algorithm and ESL Design: MATLAB/Simulink Model Transformation and Validation [chapter]

Liyuan Zhang, Michael Glaß, Nils Ballmann, Jürgen Teich
2014 Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering  
Matlab/Simulink is today's de-facto standard for model-based design in domains such as control engineering and signal processing. Particular strengths of Simulink are rapid design and algorithm exploration. Moreover, commercial tools are available to generate embedded C or HDL code directly from a Simulink model. On the other hand, Simulink models are purely functional models and, hence, designers cannot seamlessly consider the architecture that a Simulink model is later implemented on. In
more » ... cular, it is not possible to explore the different architectural alternatives and investigate the arising interactions and side-effects directly within Simulink. To benefit from Matlab/Simulink's algorithm exploration capabilities and overcome the outlined drawbacks, this work introduces a model transformation framework that converts a Simulink model to an executable specification, written in an actor-oriented modeling language. This specification then serves as the input of wellestablished Electronic System Level (ESL) design flows that, e. g., enables Design Space Exploration (DSE) and automatic code generation for both hardware and software. We also present a validation technique that considers the functional correctness by comparing the original Simulink model with the generated specification in a co-simulation environment. The co-simulation can also be used to evaluate the performance of implementation candidates during DSE. As case study, we present and investigate a torque vectoring application from an electric automotive vehicle.
doi:10.1007/978-3-319-06317-1_10 fatcat:zfryj24o7jgsfnwnt7wnmgvr6y