Transaction-level prototyping of a UMTS outer-modem for system-on-chip validation and architecture exploration

Growing demand for mobility and multimedia capacity in handheld devices translates into very complex systems where time-to-market development is critical. High data rates and improved system capacity for IP-based services increase controlling and dynamic scheduling of already complex modem technologies. This paper describes the prototyping of a UMTS terminal subsystem, which deals with several physical layer tasks such as channel multiplexing or interleaving. Our modeling strategy relies on a transaction-level platform methodology built on top of the SystemC language. The system-on-chip dynamics is modeled with behavioral modules, generic bus transactions and memory accesses. Several examples demonstrate that such a prototyping makes it possible to validate highly dynamic systems; this reduces system-on-chip development costs as it is recognized that about 70% of it lies today into verification. This prototyping also offers a large potential for fast architecture exploration with the capacity to dimension the memory components or evaluate the bus contention.