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The MathWorks today announced the availability of Communications Blockset 3 , which provides engineers with enhanced features for designing and simulating the physical layer of communication systems and components, such as commercial or defense wireless and wireline systems using Model-Based Design.   The latest version of the product also includes new channel visualization and bit error rate (BER) analysis features, which enable users to access the communications system simulation capabilities of MATLAB® and Simulink® within one GUI environment. 

The new channel visualization features in the Communication Blockset 3 provide engineers with insight into the time-, frequency-, and phasor-domain behavior of channel models.  These capabilities give designers the power to visualize and explore time-varying communications channels, to pause simulations and focus on channel behavior at an instant in time, and to use this information to design effective receivers.  The new BER tool allows users to quickly compare the results of their simulations to well-known theoretical benchmarks, prepare presentation-quality BER graphics, and analyze their BER simulation results within one GUI environment. 

“The new features and extensive set of block libraries in the Communications Blockset provide the necessary tools needed for rapid system development and simulation of communication systems,” said Sharad Sambhwani, staff engineer, Qualcomm. “Simulink and the Communications Blockset certainly saved us a lot of time and effort and allowed us to quickly evaluate performance and tradeoffs of complex communication systems.”

The Communications Blockset 3 also includes several new libraries that provide users with enhanced capabilities.  The synchronization library allows users to build receiver models with more fidelity than was previously possible without writing custom C-code.  The equalization library provides ways to model numerous adaptive and non-adaptive algorithms, including maximum likelihood sequence estimation.

“With enhanced features for Model-Based Design, the Communications Blockset 3 makes an engineer’s job easier by reducing errors during the design and development of communications systems and components, before committing to hardware and software implementations,” said Ken Karnofsky, director of marketing, signal processing and communications, The MathWorks.  “With system complexity continually increasing, it’s much more important to get the design right at the outset, avoiding costly revisions.  The Communications Blockset 3 further strengthens the capabilities of Simulink for communications modeling in those early stages of design, ensuring quality throughout the development process and resulting in shortened design cycles and faster time-to-market.”