Underlying Theory: MATLAB provides API’s to start and end the MATLAB process and send data / commands to and from MATLAB. NetSim runs these functions during initialization to simultaneously start-up a MATLAB process and whenever required send data to & from MATLAB in run time. NetSim ends the MATLAB process upon completion of the simulation.
fn_netsim_matlab_init() – which starts the MATLAB Process
fn_netsim_matlab_run() – which sends data to and from MATLAB, and sends commands to be processed in MATLAB
fn_netsim_matlab_finish() – which ends the MATLAB Process
Example of MATLAB call from WLAN PHY layer in NETSIM
Example Application: In this example, we replace NetSim’s default Rayleigh fading with the Nakagami fading model from MATLAB. Calls to the above functions are made at appropriate places in the NetSim code. So, for each packet, MATLAB calculates the Nakagami fading value in run time. This value returned by MATLAB is used by NetSim as the fading power instead of using the Rayleigh model. Note that instead of sending the commands directly from NetSim to MATLAB, we can also use a MATLAB .m file which will contain the commands to be executed by MATLAB.
Video: Interfacing NetSim with MATLAB is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c9zGfwci2g
