High-Level Modeling and Exploration of a Powerline Communication Network Based on System-on-Chip - Multi-objective Design Space Exploration of Multiprocessor SoC Architectures - page 145

Chapter 7
High-Level Modeling and Exploration
of a Powerline Communication Network Based
on System-on-Chip

Marcos Martinez, David Ferruz, Hector Posadas, and Eugenio Villar

Abstract This chapter will present the application of MULTICUBE methodology
to the design of a ITU G.hn compatible component for powerline communication.
Powerline communication is an advanced telecommunication system allowing fast
and reliable transfer of audio, video and data information using the most ubiquitous
transmission system: the power lines. This transmission line is used to exchange in-
formation between different equipments connected to the network by using advanced
coding techniques like such as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing. The
starting point of the analysis is a high level SystemC-based virtual platform where
we will study the effects of the variation of a pre-defined set of design parameters
on a set of pre-defined metrics. This automatic analysis will drive the design choices
in order to build an optimized industrial system. We will show that the SystemC-
based virtual platform combined with the MULTICUBE design space exploration
framework can save up to 80% of designer work time while achieving better results
in terms of performance.

7.1 Introduction

In this chapter we will focus on the application of MULTICUBE methodology to a
DS2 use case in order to stress the proposed design exploration flow in a real industrial
environment. This use case is based on the high-level modeling and analysis of an
in-home transmission system over powerline infrastructure based on the novel ITU-
G.hn standard. The model will be analyzed in order to optimize Quality of Service
and design parameters. The resulting automatic analysis flow will be compared to
current semi-automatic approaches based on scripting techniques.
The chosen use case shows the integration of MULTICUBE flow with a high
level modeling platform written in SystemC with TLM-based communications where

H. Posadas ( )
University of Cantabria, Santander, Spain
e-mail: [e-mail]