Radio Frequency (RF) & Wireless Design

If anyone has ever seen or used LabVIEW, then they are familiar with the Virtual Instruments that National Instruments created as software to support their hardware add-in cards back in the 90s. As LabVIEW evolved, it became more 'extensible' by the use of C/C++ programming tools such as LabVIEW CVI.

The use of virtual instruements has extended into simulation tools as Power Supplies, Mulitmeters, Oscilloscopes, and Spectrum Analyzers to names a few. Electronics Workbench was one of those tools, that i am familiar with that was one of the first to go beyond the text format of most SPICE simulators.

Other simulation tools have also embraced this approach and Matlab (Matrix Laboratory) has done this with control system blocks that are referenced to s-domain equations (as well as all the matrix equations used) via their Simulink environment.

https://www.mathworks.com/solutions/wireless-communications.html

Many of the RF amplifer designs are based upon a closed-loop feedback and thus naturally extend that type of electrical design into a control system mathematical model.

However, the real power of Simulink is thru the Simscape program which mimics many multi-domain physics modeling programs such as Ansys and Comsol. In this way electrical characteristics can cross over into mechanical movement model domains (such as drones or robotics) as well as liquid flow models for fluids and gases. The particular add-in module of Simscape of interest is the Simscape Electrical add-in module.

Simscape Electrical is where schematics can relate to control systems in Simulink, which can relate to mathematical models in Matlab.

As part of a more complex world of RF designs, many systems relate to not just one model, but an array of models. This is clearly obvious in a Phased Array Antenna. So understanding the control of a single model and then managing the multiplexing and phasing (time shifting) of other models can be very difficult to understand, manage, and control; especially for finding the 'sweet spot' of operation.

It takes a very sophisticated and savvy programmer to understand and create a complex software routine to control a simple 4x4 antenna array, let alone a Massive MiMO array of 144 patches (12x12); and this is just the beginning !!

So a higher order program is necessary to model and control this is an easy to understand (and develop), but also have the power for complex algorithms. Matlab-Simulink-Simscape-Electrical is that program :

https://www.mathworks.com/solutions/wireless-communications/digital-rf-antenna.html

And if that wasn't enough, it is an embedded programmers dream, since it can synthesize C/C++ code for targets such as MCUs, CPUs, and most importantly DSPs. - - - But it doesn't stop there. It is one of the very few programs that can synthesize HDL (VHDL, Verilog) code as well for FPGA state machines !!

FPGAs are emerging in every industry as the ultra-reliable, fully deterministic embedded device where speed, control, and logic merge and clock cycle latencies matter. So if your communication 'transaction' needs to get there fast, then this is the go to device.

So for anyone looking to take a look at a tool that they may otherwise as discounted as not-for-them, take a deeper look at Simscape Electrical for Radio Frequency (RF) and Wireless projects, but also for any project that has a control system in mind.