End-to-end communication systems modeling using hardware-accelerated simulation tool

Simulations of end-to-end communication systems are conventionally modeled using a high-level programming language and run on a general-purpose computer. However, as communication technologies become more sophisticated, the complexity of these software simulations increases, which may result in a longer, and possibly unacceptable, run time. With schedule constraints as well as increasing demand from the end users for more reliable systems, i.e., systems with lower bit error rates, the simulation run time is a crucial factor in system development. In this paper, we present a hardware/software cosimulation tool for complex, end-to-end communication systems. The tool, called hardware-accelerated simulation tool (HAST), uses off-the-shelf field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), together with a high-level programming language, to accelerate the run time of computationally intensive tasks. The design and implementation aspects of the tool, including simulation examples of stressed military communications, are discussed. We also demonstrate that simulations developed using HAST can provide significant run-time speedup compared to software-only simulations.