Embedded IDE Link 4.0

Processor-in-the-Loop Verification Using Simulink

Embedded IDE Link lets you perform component-based testing using Simulink as a test harness. Used with Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder, Embedded IDE Link creates a PIL testing environment from your model that serves as the data-exchange interface between the host simulation and the object code executing on the target.

The original Simulink model can then be used as an embedded test harness to verify the execution of the code on the target while data is automatically transferred between the code on the target and the model in Simulink.

PIL Testing in Controls Applications

For any application, open-loop tests can be created that use the Signal Builder block, or another Simulink signal-generation device, to provide the input test stimulus. Typically, closed-loop tests are created by adding a plant model to an open-loop test. When executed as part of a PIL cosimulation, a plant model provides test engineers with high-fidelity test scenarios that exercise those portions of the software’s dynamic behavior which open-loop, stimulus-response testing cannot.

Functional Verification Through PIL

PIL tests do not run in real time, as Simulink controls the execution of the PIL code on the target processor or the instruction set simulator. The simulation halts during each sample period while data is transferred to the target processor or the instruction set simulator. Once the object code completes executing on the processor, the data is transferred back to the host to resume the host simulation. Through this approach, you can check the functional differences between the model and the generated and compiled object code to identify any potential deviations in the performance introduced by the compilation process.

Noise cancellation example with a processor-in-the-loop model showing results running on the host (top) and on the target processor (bottom), and the difference between the two sets of results (right).