Early Verification with MATLAB and Simulink

Early verification is a design strategy, enabled by Model-Based Design, that lets engineering teams identify and correct most problems before implementation and test, using executable specifications, multidomain simulations, and virtual testbeds.  Groups who adopt these practices consistently report savings of 50% or more in development time.

And early verification can be adopted incrementally.  Learn more about early verification for:
Control Systems
DSP Systems

Already using Model-Based Design? Learn about early verification for Advanced Model-Based Design Applications

Early Verification for Control Systems

Reduce development time and cost

Innovative engineering teams are meeting this challenge through early verification of the design by using Simulink and dynamic system simulation. They have significantly reduced development and testing time and costs by validating system performance well before integration and test. Xerox, for example, has cut as much as 80% of their controls development time.

Early verification involves:

• Developing multidomain models of your plant and controller
• Running desktop simulations to rapidly discover and fix design and integration issues before going to hardware test and final production code
• Reusing models for real-time testing of the control system under a wide range of operating conditions

Start verifying before you have access to the prototype hardware

With early verification, you gain a better understanding of the system behavior to improve the control system and verify the electromechanical design before prototypes are built. You can troubleshoot existing design problems without tying up production hardware systems, and ultimately use fewer physical prototypes as you do more testing in simulation. By starting before hardware is available and by simulating conditions that would be dangerous or costly to examine with real hardware, you are able to test more thoroughly

You can achieve further time and cost savings by generating code directly from your models to further accelerate test and implementation.

Early Verification for Signal Processing Systems

With early verification, engineering teams are dramatically reducing signal processing software and hardware verification time.

• Harman Becker cut time to design and verify bit-error-rate performance by 75% for OFDM radio receivers.
• Philips validated real-time audio algorithms for surround sound system without low-level DSP programming.
• Yokogawa Electric cut hardware development time by 50% for new optical network devices.

They do this by using MATLAB and Simulink to rapidly create and simulate algorithms and multidomain models to verify that designs meet system-level requirements, including the effects of timing and impairments.

Using the model as a reusable test bench, you can verify your algorithms with simulation, and then verify your implementation through cosimulation with popular embedded software development tools and EDA simulation tools. This lets you find and correct design flaws faster and avoid expensive debugging at the implementation phase.

You can also rapidly design and test algorithms directly on DSP hardware without low-level programming. In addition, MathWorks and third-party products automate integration with data acquisition hardware and test and measurement instruments, so you can verify algorithm and system behavior with real-world measured data.

Early Verification for Advanced Model-Based Design Applications

Perhaps your organization is already using Simulink to design embedded control algorithms and multidomain systems. How do you verify your designs early to avoid expensive bug fixes in the implementation and integration phases?

With systematic verification and validation techniques, you can:

• Perform virtual testing and verify designs through simulation
• Validate designs against requirements to help ensure systems will work as planned
• Create models and tests that you can reuse throughout the development process

The key to early verification with Model-Based Design is the use of system-level models which serve as an executable specification, linking requirements to your design. Through dynamic simulation, you can verify and validate designs and rigorously test against requirements, including adherence to DO-178B, IEC 61508, and other industry standards - before implementation and integration.