Synthesis of HDL Code for FPGA Design Using System Generator

There has been considerable recent interest in defining a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) to facilitate code reuse in the signal processing subsystems of software-defined radios. HDL for FPGA-based signal processing is a significant aspect of such HAL efforts. In this paper, the authors show how a platform-based approach to FPGA design that provides a high level of design abstraction can also provide the ability to target multiple FPGA families from a single source model. The approach combines direct mapping of a Simulink model with code generation of register-transfer level HDL. By exploiting retiming and other optimizations available through logic synthesis, it is possible to obtain very efficient realizations of signal processing functions.