I've got a minor DSP/comm task to put in an FPGA:
Complex demod to baseband, CIC+decimate+FIR LPF chain, magnitude estimate, some FSK and DPSK data to interpolate, correlate and extract, plus other sundry tasks.
I'd like to model this all in untimed/behavioral floating-point, have a quick way to evaluate filtering options (including IIR, varying lengths and structures/forms) and quantization effects, with automatic conversion to a somewhat optimal fixed-point implementation that a tool can automatically write out as VHDL (RTL, not behavioral). Parameterizable block diagram entry is a plus. Probes/sinks with FFT and time plots and file writes at nodes of interest are also desireable. (SUMMARY: design/analyze at high level, let tools do dirty, low-level work.)
Maybe I ask too much ;-) but it seems like this is such a common problem and flow that solutions would abound. However, I've been out of the DSP world for a while, and don't know what the best, cheapest, or most productive tool options are...
What would the gurus of comp.dsp and comp.arch.fpga suggest?
I have access to MathCad, Matlab (with FDAT), Simulink, and possibly LabView (National Instruments?) and (Cocentric System Studio (Synopys) but am not fluent with them.
I've entered the design in Cadence/CoWare's SPW, but am getting frustrated with it -- not as easy to explore different architectures as I had hoped.
I suppose Ptolemy is an option, if the learning curve is not staggering. Agilent has some Ptolemy add-ons for fixed-point analysis and optimization, but they're not free or in my company's budget for this project.
Any and all constructive suggestions are very much appreciated; thanks in advance...
MarkJ