Using analog circuit behavior to generate SystemC events for an acceleration of mixed-signal simulation

Abstract

Analysis of mixed-signal circuits on system level demands for an accelerated simulation of analog blocks. We precompute state space representations that can be used to evaluate the circuit response and predict the occurrence of events triggered by analog components. Interfacing such models to SystemC digital simulation allows for very fast mixed-signal transient analysis. The key contribution of this paper is the dynamic generation of SystemC events from analog descriptions. We evaluate the performance of our approach using PWM (pulse width modulation) example circuits from the automotive domain which are interfaced to a SystemC microcontroller model. Accuracy and speed is compared to reference simulations utilizing traditional SPICE-like analog simulators. Our approach allows for a speedup of up to 70 for mixed-signal simulations compared to traditional analog and digital simulators.