Simulink Data Cube Accumulation

Hello, I am fairly new to Simulink & have been trying to find an answer to my question online and on the Mathworks forums to no avail.

I have a Simulink model where I'd like to accumulate samples into a data matrix (for matrix/block processing later on). I have been using the "Data Store Memory" to allocate memory for this data matrix. To illustrate with an example: I have discrete samples flowing through my model, I'd like to create a data matrix which is 1000 samples x 10 data vectors. I have a counter which counts up to 1000, at which point it increments a column counter.

Currently I am using a buffer object (from DSP toolbox) with a buffer size of 1000, and I'm feeding that into a "Data Store Write" block with an element assignment of "dataMatrix(:,1)". There are a few issues with this: 1. The "Data Store Write" block does not appear to be able to handle a buffered input; 2. Even if it did handle the buffered input, I would only ever be assigning column 1 of the dataMatrix, I can't figure out a way to dynamically alter the column of the "Data Write Store" element assignment.

Does anyone know how to accomplish what I'm trying to do? I'm trying to avoid using a Matlab function block if at all possible given that I am eventually deploying this on hardware.

Please let me know if you have any questions or clarifications!

Thank you in advance,

Chris

Answer 1

[Brian Neiswander]

One approach is to use the "Buffer" block to create data frames and then use a "To Workspace" block to write the frames to a workspace variable. I created a simple example shown in the figure below.

In this example, a discrete "Sine Wave" block is used to generate a signal with a sample time of 0.01. The output is buffered into frames of size 1000x1 using a "Buffer" block. The output of the "Buffer" block is passed to a "To Workspace" block that is set to save the 2-D signal as a "3-D array (concatenate along third dimension)".

After running the simulation, a workspace variable named "simout" is created:

>> whos simout
    Name           Size              Bytes  Class     Attributes

    simout      1000x1x11            88000  double

You can see above that the "simout" variable is of size 1000x1x11. The first frame contains the buffer's initial condition. The subsequent 10 frames each contain 10 seconds of data.

Also, note that you can use "MATLAB Function" blocks and still deploy to hardware. You need to make sure that the compilation directive:

%#codegen

is present in your function definition as:

function y = fcn(u)
%#codegen

y = u;

See the link below for more information about the compilation directive:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/fixedpoint/ug/adding-the-compilation-directive-codegen.html

[Chris]

Hi Brian, Thank you for your answers, I appreciate the insight. One issue with doing it this way, is that my data matrix is only available once the simulation is complete. Unfortunately, I need to perform operations along various dimensions of this data matrix while the simulation is executing. As a result, I need to have a way to accumulate the data matrix as the simulation progresses. Is there a way to do this?

Thank you in advance,

Chris