Embedded signal processing systems are usually associated with real-time constraints and/or high data rates such that fully software implementation are often not satisfactory. In that case, mixed hardware/software implementations are to be investigated. However the increasing complexity of current applications makes classical design processes time consuming and consequently incompatible with an efficient design space exploration. To address this problem, we propose a system-level design based methodology that aims at unifying the design flow from the functional description to the physical HW/SW implementation through functional and architectural flexibility. Our approach consists in automatically refining high abstraction level models through the use of an electronic system-level (ESL) design tool according to function models from the one hand and prototyping platform models from the other hand. We illustrate our methodology with the design of a wireless communication system. We provide design results showing the variety of dedicated architectures that can be investigated with this design flow.
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