RadiSim - a fast digital RF behavioral simulator including bit error rate assessment for system exploration, validation, and tuning

RadSim is a fast, functional, and accurate RF (radiofrequency) system simulator which estimates system performance, including bit error rate (BER), in minutes instead of hours or days. Since RadiSim simulated the entire transmit-through-receive path quickly, we were able to search a large design space while creating our commercial radio chip. We describe the background and motivation; chip system model; fundamental design decisions; a novel way to estimate minimum E_b/N_O given maximum BER; optimal aggregation of BER estimates; our validation strategy and results; and some essential chip improvements enabled by RadiSim.