The Fixed-Point Blockset includes a collection of blocks that extend the standard Simulink® block library. With these blocks, you can create discrete-time dynamic systems that use fixed-point arithmetic. As a result, Simulink can simulate effects commonly encountered in fixed-point systems for applications such as control systems and time-domain filtering. The Fixed-Point Blockset includes these major features:

• Integer, fractional, and generalized fixed-point data types:

  • Unsigned and two's complement formats

  • Word size from 1 to 128 bits

• Floating-point data types:

  • IEEE-style singles and doubles

  • A nonstandard IEEE-style data type, where the fraction (mantissa) can range from 1 to 52 bits and the exponent can range from 1 to 11 bits

• Methods for overflow handling, scaling, and rounding of fixed-point data types

• Tools are provided to facilitate:

  • The collection of minimum and maximum simulation values

  • The optimization of scaling parameters

  • The display of input and output signals

• With the Real-Time Workshop^®, you can generate C code for execution on a fixed-point embedded processor; the generated code uses only integer types and automatically includes all operations, such as shifts, needed to account for differences in fixed-point locations

Exploring the Blockset

To open the Fixed-Point Blockset library, type

fixpt

at the MATLAB® command line, or right-click on the Fixed-Point Blockset listing in the Simulink Library Browser. Double-click on any block icon in the library to see its parameter dialog box. Press the Help button to view the HTML-based help for that block.

The Fixed-Point Blockset library is shown below.

Open

System Requirements

The Fixed-Point Blockset is a multi-platform product that you install on a host computer running any of the operating systems supported by The MathWorks. The Fixed-Point Blockset requires:

• MATLAB 6.0 (Release 12)

• Simulink 4.0 (Release 12)

In addition, if you want to modify the fixed-point blocks, you need one of the C compilers supported by the mex utility. If you want to generate code from your fixed-point models, you must have the Real-Time Workshop. If you want to create an executable from the generated code, you must have the appropriate C compiler and linker.

Related Products

The MathWorks provides several related products that are relevant to the kinds of tasks you can perform with the Fixed-Point Blockset. The toolboxes listed below all include functions that extend MATLAB capabilities. The blocksets all include blocks that extend Simulink capabilities.