Timed Coloured Petri Nets for Performance Evaluation of DSP Applications: The 3GPP LTE Case Study

Abstract : In this paper we propose the use of Timed Coloured Petri Nets for the Performance Evaluation of Hardware/Software systems for DSP applications. Complex systems on chip, composed by hardware and software parts, are often required to meet strict timing constraints, both in terms of throughput and latency. However, the verification of the suitability of a system configuration can usually be performed only after the integration of the hardware and software components, when design modifications and optimizations are particularly expensive. This article proposes a framework to evaluate the performance of HW/SW systems in which Timed Coloured Petri Nets can be exploited in the early phases of the design. The framework is tested by modelling the Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH) bit-rate receiver portion of 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) LTE (Long Term Evolution) standard, the next generation of 3G wireless systems.