INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT IN Volume-8,Issue-3,(Sep-17)

TECHNOLOGY ISSN (O) :- 2349-3585

Verification of Bluetooth Low Energy

Controller In UVM Methodology
__________________________________________________________________________________________
K.Priyanka1,M.M. Dasu2
1,2
Department of Ece, Assistant Professor, Gandhiji Institute of Science and Technology, India

Abstract This paper presents a verification architecture of
the Bluetooth Low Energy Link Layer Controller. The tested
controller is a hardware implementation of the lower layers,
de- scribed in the Bluetooth Low Energy Specification. The
designed testbench uses a UVM methodology and
constrained random verification techniques to meet the
expected functional coverage metrics.
I.INTRODUCTION
The most demanding challenges for the testbench design are
meeting the specification requirements and quality standards.
There is no universal approach for successful verification of
any design, usually several solutions are used to achieve ex-
pected metrics. One of the most important goals is meeting the
functional requirements. It means the verification environment
must prove that the design follows the protocol-specific rules
defined in the standard. Moreover, it must be tested whether
the requirements are met under any conditions, whether the
design is resistant to transmission errors and unexpected
states, such as connection loss or access collisions.The
Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) is a framework
that provides a structural solution for complex verification
environments. The methodology allows to auto- mate the
implementation process and makes easier to add new
features. It also simplifies the infrastructure planning e.g.
allows to easily collect and analyse the coverage data.There is
a number of related work discussing verification
environments. A UVM example is presented in for mixed-
signal system (testbench is used to estimate the power con-
sumption). In this paper we present a verification environment
designed for verification of the Bluetooth Low Energy Link
Layer Controller.
II.BLUETOOTH LOW ENERGY VERIFICATION
SCOPE
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a packet-based protocol [3].
The specification defines the Bluetooth Host and the Bluetooth
Controller. The Bluetooth Host consists of software layers.
The Host Controller Interface (HCI) is a set of services
defined between Host and Controller and may be implemented
over any communication protocol (e.g. USB, I2C). The
Bluetooth Controller architecture is not fixed and may be
different depending on requirements. In general, there is a
hardware part, such as physical (PHY) and link layers and a
firmware part, running on CPU and controlling the hardware.
The purpose of this work is to verify the digital hardware
partofthedesignedcontroller-theBLELinkLayerController (later
referred as DUT). The design firmware code is reused in the
verification environment as a part of the Layering Agent. The
BLE Link Layer Controller has two interfaces: CPU interface
(e.g. APB or AXI) and physical layer interface connection to
the analog PHY. The PHY functionality is limited to very
basic operations, as the protocol coding itself is handled by the
BLE Link Layer Controller. The PHY functional model has
been developed, which translates analog PHY interface into a
physical channel model. The physical channel corresponds to
the real radio environment. Therefore several PHYs can be
online at once, which allows to test complex network
scenarios. The CPU interface and the Bluetooth physical layer
interface (BLE interface) are controlled by UVM Agents. The
Layering Agent implements the firmware over both interfaces.
The BLE Interface Agent and the Layering Agent coupled
together can be called the BLE Controller Model, that must be
capable of generating some random events, such as delays or
transmission errors. Use of Layering Agents allows that test
scenarios can be implemented using HCI level of abstraction
in both, CPU and physical interfaces.
III.TESTBENCH ARCHITECTURE
The verification environment was designed to verify a network
that consists of up to two BLE Controllers (DUTs) and up to

20
All rights reserved by www.ijrdt.org
Paper Title:-Verification of Bluetooth Low Energy Controller In UVM Methodology
eighty BLE Controller Models. The test harness is shown in
Figure 1. The harness connects components using physical
channel model of the real radio environment. Implementation
of this connection gives an opportunity to verify different
transaction scenarios using an arbitrary network structure. The
harness is connected to the UVM environment by CPU
Interface Agent(s) and BLE Interface Agent(s).
generictestbench architecture for verification of
Controller is shown in Figure 2. A designed architecture was
created in a way that number of agents connected to the
harness can be easily modified for each testcase. The main
components of the designed UVM testbench are: • Agent
encapsulates a sequencer (SQR), driver (DRV) and monitor
(MON). Sequencer creates streams of transactions and sends a
Sequence Items downstream to a driver.
Fig. 1. Test harness
Driver pulls those transaction and maps the Sequence Items to
the signal level format required by the DUT interface. Monitor
observes signals on the interface and assembles sequence
items that it distributes to the rest of the verification
environment through one or more standard communication
ports.
• Layering Agent structure gives the opportunity of using
different protocol to drive the DUT. It simplifies upper layers
of the environment and allows to reuse protocol wrappers
(such as a firmware)
• Virtual Sequencer creates streams of transactions for the
target Sequencers. This component drives Agents and controls
the actual test scenario by processing Virtual Sequences.
• Coverage Collector collects interface events and registers the
functional coverage.
• Scoreboard is used to verify whether the test scenario results
are correct. It may check the data integrity, the event order or
status propagation through the DUT. It also detects timeouts
or deadlocks.
• Environment is an entity that assembles
21
testbenchstructure. It consists of Virtual Sequencer, coverage
components, Scoreboard, Agents and Layering Agents. It can
be configured using parameters that allow to modify its
structure for various test scenarios.
• Test is the top level of the component hierarchy. It controls
the generation of the environment and initiates the test
A sequences.
BLE The BLE Interface Agent acts like a regular Bluetooth device.
Using UVM configuration mechanism, it may be set up as a
transmitter, receiver or coverage collector without any
implementation changes. Bluetooth packet is an information
unit which is used as an air interface packet in the link layer
for all Bluetooth devices. In BLE Interface Agent, Bluetooth
packets are stored in the basic UVM data item - BLE
Sequence Item. This basic data item contains all essential
information about carrying BLE Packet including its structure
and additional data as a protocol delay or interface errors. The
BLE Interface Driver is responsible for initiating requests for
new transactions and driving them to the DUT (with delay
control). It includes all of the bitstream processing features
like CRC generation and checking or data whitening. When
BLE Interface Agent works in receiver mode, it is capable of
collecting data from the interface and packing it to the
sequence data item.
Fig. 2. TB architecture
By using Questa simulation software, the Verification of BLE
components such as transmit Agent and receive agent are done
and the log files for the test cases are generated with Coverage
report. Table shows the coverage of the whole environment
for code and functional coverage. 92.5% overall coverage has
been obtained. It is not 100% as there is unreachable or
unobservable code like testing logics, redundant code and
the functionality which is not under verification. The functional
ISSN:-2349-3585 |www.ijrdt.org
Paper Title:-Verification of Bluetooth Low Energy Controller In UVM Methodology
coverage has been attained by developing sufficient assertions
and creating Cover groups, cover points and bins. 100%
assertion coverage has been obtained
Fig 3. Verification of BLE in UVM from master to slave
Table 1 and 2 shows the functional coverage and the code
coverage of transmitter and receiver modules respectively. Tx
coverage is 77.58% and Rx coverage is 77.71%. The cover
group coverage is not 100% as all the registered address is not
required to be checked which results in 89.23% coverage. In
the scoreboard, the actual output is compared with the
expected one. If the obtained output matches with the
expected result then we conclude that the verification is
completed successfully. By using Questa simulation software,
the Verification of BLE components such as transmit Agent
and receive agent are done and the log files for the test cases
are generated with Coverage report. Table 1 shows the
coverage of the whole environment for code and functional
coverage. 92.5% overall coverage has been obtained. Table 1
and 2 shows the functional coverage and the code coverage of
transmitter and receiver modules
Table 1 Local Instance Coverage Details
22
TABLE 2 Coverage Details For Transmit Packet Cover
Group
UVM establishes a methodology to improve design and
verification efficiency, verification data portability, and tool
and VIP interoperability. More than a collection of best-in-
class verification solutions, the Questa Verification Platform
from Mentor Graphics provides the means to transform
verification.
CONCLUSION
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is rather new protocol, and in
this study we deepened the understanding of both the
theoretical capabilities of the protocol itself and the
capabilities of the currently available transceivers to
implement the protocol. In the paper, we also compared BLE
with two other protocols-Simplicity, which is a proprietary
protocol developed by Texas Instruments, and IEEE 802.15.4,
which is the de-facto communication standard in the WSNs.
The results reveal that BLE can potentially support the
maximum LL data throughput of around 320kbit/s. This is
about 70% higher than the maximum throughput possible for
IEEE 802.15.4 with 2450 DSSS PHY (i.e.,190kbit/s).
Nonetheless, the results of the measurements that were
executed using the real BLE transceivers revealed that the
current version of the used BLE stack has several limitations,
which prevented us from obtaining a throughput higher than
123kbit/s. This is about 20% lower than the throughput we
have obtained with the IEEE 802.15.4 transceivers and 40%
lower than the maximum throughput that was measured for
SimpliciTI transceivers. The maximum throughput that we
managed to obtain on BLE advertising channels was below 10
kbit/s. The absence of the mechanism for the BLE Controller
to inform the Host about the start/end of an advertising event
ISSN:-2349-3585 |www.ijrdt.org
Paper Title:-Verification of Bluetooth Low Energy Controller In UVM Methodology

complicates the implementation of the data transfer on BLE

advertising channels. The specifications of are verified
successfully using UVM methodology on QuestaSim
simulator. Functional coverage i.e. measure of implementation
of design is carried out and 92.5% of coverage is extracted.
The coverage can be improved by modifying the code
according to the need. The scoreboard successfully compares
the result of every transaction generated.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I express my sincere gratitude to Mr M.M. Dasu, Department
of ECE , GIST college, India and also thanks to for
continuous guidance and other Professors of Department of
VLSI Design and Embedded Systems, GIST, India for
extending their help & support in giving technical ideas about
the paper without which I would not come up with this paper.
REFERENCES
[1] Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) 1.1 Users
Guide, Accellera, 2011.
[2] F. Neumann, M. Sathyamurthy, L. Kotynia, E. Hennig, R.
Sommer, ‖UVM-based Verification of Smart-Sensor
Systems,‖ International Conference on Synthesis, Modeling,
Analysis and Simulation Methods and Applications to Circuit
Design (SMACD), 2012.
[3] Bluetooth Specification, version 4.0, 2010.
[4] J. Bergeron, F. Delguste, S. Knoeck, S. McMaster, A.
Pratt, A. Sharma ‖Beyond UVM: Creating Truly Reusable
Protocol Layering,‖ Synopsys, Inc., 2013.
[5] Y. Kim and L.-S. Kim,‖64-bit carry select adder with
reduced area,‖Electron.Lett. Vol. 37, no. 10, pp. 614-615, May
2001.
[6]J. M. Rabaey, Digital integrated circuits—A Design
perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2001.
[7] T. Y. Ceiang and M. J. Hsiao, ―Carry-select adder using
single ripple carry adder, ‖ Electron.Lett., vol. 34, no. 22, pp.
2101–2103, 1998. 978-1.

23
ISSN:-2349-3585 |www.ijrdt.org