CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
30 August 2004
Product News
The MathWorks Introduces RF Design and Simulation Products for MATLAB and Simulink
The MathWorks announced the availability of the RF Blockset and the RF Toolbox, two new products designed to expand the scope of Model-Based Design for signal processing and communications engineering applications. Both products enhance the functionality of the MathWorks software platforms, MATLAB® and Simulink®, by providing users with a broad scope of features and benefits for RF system design, analysis, development, and implementation.
The MathWorks RF Blockset works within the Simulink environment and offers users a library of blocks to model the behavior of RF amplifiers, mixers, filters, and transmission lines. Using the RF Blockset, system architects can apply Model-Based Design to develop commercial and defense wireless communication systems and semiconductors faster and more efficiently. Engineers can validate a working model in Simulink and then use that model as an executable specification to verify design and implementation. As a result, users can optimize an entire RF system, eliminating laborious programming and delivering substantial time and cost savings.
"Modeling the interaction of the two worlds of signal processing algorithms and RF power amplifier characteristics is critical to my work," said Jussi Hovila, algorithm and hardware design engineer with Nokia Networks.
"With RF Blockset I can model both domains in a rapid way. Building the model is faster than by other methods, and the conversion to a baseband complex model means the model runs fast too."
Also available from The MathWorks is the RF Toolbox, which extends the MATLAB technical computing environment by providing users with pre-built design and analysis functions and a graphical tool for working with, analyzing, and visualizing the behavior of RF components. With the RF Toolbox, RF engineers can now access industry standard data files and work with network parameters in MATLAB to manipulate data and visualize results of analysis, thereby eliminating error-prone manual calculations. Additionally, the RF Toolbox includes rectangular, polar, and Smith® charts for visualizing data.
The RF Blockset works with the RF Toolbox to manipulate network parameters in the MATLAB workspace or to read in data from industry-standard file formats. During simulation, blocks are modeled using a time-domain, complex- baseband representation for fast simulations and compatibility with other Simulink blocks, such as those in the Communications Blockset (available separately). This combination enables the development of algorithms to mitigate the effect of RF impairments on system performance.
Pricing and Availability
The RF Blockset and RF Toolbox are available immediately for Windows, UNIX/Linux, and Macintosh platforms. U.S. list prices start at $2,000 for the RF Blockset and $1,000 for the RF Toolbox.
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