Nowadays the digital systems design is almost exclusively realized using hardware description languages (HDL). In Europe, the VHDL (Very-High-Speed Integrated Circuits HDL) is the most widely used HDL. Although HDLs brought a lot of advantages into the design process, the HDL structural models, especially on register transfer and lower layers, are harder to read than the previously used schematic representations. That is why a lot of commercial EDA (Electronic Design Automation) systems include some kind of visualization tool enabling to represent a model structure in a graphical form. However, these systems are usually too complex and expensive for the education purpose. In this case simple, easy to use visualization tool would be more appropriate. The paper deals with the problem of the structural models visualization as well as with the design and implementation of the visualization tool devoted to the VHDL structural models visualization. The presented tool offers the possibility to display the schematic view corresponding to the input VHDL model, edit the schematic layout, print it or export it to an image file. The tool preserves the model hierarchy and enables to easily switch among the respective levels. It represents an useful tool in the process of the VHDL structural model verification and debugging as well as for documentation purposes.
With the expansion of the Internet-of-Things, energy-efficient communication is becoming vital. The communication among energy-limited devices (e.g., powered by batteries or harvesting the energy from their environment) must be energy-efficient, prolonging their lifetime or increasing data throughput. This article aims at proposing energy-efficient periodic communication for devices over the ZigBee protocol and powered by a battery. We propose using timing channels for different data priorities, thus, more important data are sent more frequently. The priority is also considered in case of congested traffic, where a central device (coordinator) prioritizes more important communication. We have implemented a simulator, which serves for verification of the proposed solution, and conducted experiments comparing the proposed EEMIP method with the standard nonbeacon ZigBee communication. The experimental results show that the proposed method is more energy efficient.
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