Model based design workflow for FPGA compliance with DO-254 standard

In order to meet a number of industries hardware that require high reliability and large amount of code, this paper gives a model-based design (MBD) workflow compliance with DO-254 standard for hardware development process. Taking the Digital down conversion (DDC) for example; this paper has described how to use the tool chain of Simulink, HDL Coder and Modelsim to complete the entire development process. In this way, we can build a DDC model starting from requirements analysis to functional verification and system testing of the model, fixed-point optimization, code generation, and then validation the DDC system on XUPV5 board in visual development environment. The entire process which starts from design concept to hardware implementation always focuses on the DDC model for continuous testing and verification. In this way, we can verify and validate the correctness of the design of DDC in three different levels, so that design flaws could be exhumed in the early stages of the development. The proposed solution is not only overcoming the flaws of low efficiency and difficulty of meeting the requirements in traditional methods of development, but also to avoid the potential risk in technology and market.