Rapid Prototyping of Wireless Physical Layer Modules Using Flexible Software/Hardware Design Flow

This paper describes a step by step approach in designing wireless physical layer modules starting from a software implementation in MATLAB to a hardware implementation using Xilinx SysGen and ModelSim. The described design flow promotes baseband physical layer research by providing high flexibility and speed to the process of module creation verification and deployment. The novelty introduced into our system lies within the flexible components created using this design flow, which enables on-the-fly modification of multiple parameters to suit various wireless protocols.