= Physical Layer Design Flows = There are two primary flows that we employ when investigating new ideas in physical layer space. The first is a non-real-time system called [wiki:WARPLab WARPLab]. This makes real-time use of the channel but all the transmitter and receiver processing is done offline in MATLAB. This is a good beginning when trying new physical layer ideas. The second is building [wiki:PHY real-time systems] to be implemented in the FPGA. Hence the programs can be independent and standalone on the node. Once new ideas have shown promise they can be hardened. We primarily use [http://www.xilinx.com/ise/optional_prod/system_generator.htm System Generator] to build our physical layers. [[Image(GettingStarted/Images:designflow.jpg, 600px)]] The real-time design flow starts at the System Generator layer but also must include the layer above, C/C++ code in the PowerPC to implement a MAC to control the physical layer. So the design flows are divided into: * Real-time flow - [wiki:PHY OFDM] * Non-real-time flow - [wiki:WARPLab WARPLab]