Case Study: AT4 wireless achieves over 90% internal test coverage for LTE physical-layer testing with MathWorks MATLAB and Simulink

AT4 wireless Increases Internal Test Coverage to Over 90% for LTE Physical Layer Test Equipment Designs

AT4 wireless, a test-equipment provider based in Malaga, Spain, needed to improve verification of its LTE physical-layer designs and reduce slow, manual testing that delayed bug discovery. Working with MathWorks tools—primarily MATLAB and Simulink (plus Signal Processing and Communications toolboxes)—the team sought a reusable reference model and automated test process to validate FPGA implementations against LTE specifications.

Using MathWorks’ MATLAB and Simulink workflows (including Fixed-Point Designer and MATLAB Compiler), AT4 wireless created a full physical-layer reference model, generated test vectors for FPGA cosimulation and hardware-in-the-loop, and integrated analysis algorithms into their test software. The MathWorks-based approach boosted internal test coverage to over 90% (about four times previous coverage), cut development effort by 25–30%, enabled reuse of a single test harness across the project life cycle, and gave the team near‑100% confidence that the FPGA matched the model.

AT4 wireless

Francisco Javier Campos

FPGA Architect