The Cadence® Signal Processing Worksystem (SPW) is a block oriented design, simulation, and implementation environment for communication systems. It provides the tools, needed for interactive simulations, tests, and implementations for communication systems, and other systems such as digital signal processing (DSP) designs. Typical design applications include digital communication systems, image processing, multimedia, radar systems, control systems, digital audio, and high-definition television.  In our project, we use SPW for the design, implementation, and performances evaluation of digital communication systems. 

SPW consists of several modules. The main modules are the File Manager, BDE, SigCalc, the Simulation Manager, the SPB-I Simulator, and the DSP Library. In addition, a design database is provided.

File Manager - is a unified tool that lets you create and manage SPW libraries, access all types of SPW data files, and invoke the various SPW tools.

Block Diagram Editor (BDE) - BDE graphically represents a system as a set of functional blocks connected by wires. Each block is a symbol that represents an operation, and the interconnecting wires symbolize the flow of signals between blocks.

Signal Calculator (SigCalc) - creates input signals for the simulation of your design, and analyze the output signals from your design. It can also perform signal calculations, fixed-point operations, signal filtering, and analyze functions such as Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and cross correlations.

Simulation Manager - allows you to set up and run simulations. You can choose to run a simulation with the standard SPB-I Simulator or the optional Simulation Program Builder - Compiled (SPB-C) (formerly code Generation System) Simulator. The Simulation Manager provides and interactive debugger to help isolate design problems.

DSP Library - provides a standard set of library blocks to help you design and simulate a wide range of digital signal processing systems. The SPW DSP Library contain blocks you can use in BDE to build a signal-processing design, but may only have minimal exposure to simulations and simulation programming. The engineer is responsible for entering a correct description of the system to be simulated in block diagram form, and for setting the parameter values. SPW assumes all the responsibilities for generating the simulation program, executing the simulation program and displaying the results. Since all the basic bookkeeping functions are handled by SPW, you can concentrate on your system solution, result analysis, and design iteration.

For more detailed information about this software, please visit Cadence® Web page on SPW at: http://www.cadence.com/products/spw.html.