Development of highly reliable UVM-based Verification Environment for SpaceWire Codec

SpaceWire (SpW) is a communication standard widely used in space applications. It requires, in addition to sending and receiving payload data, the continuous transmission between two hosts of information to establish and maintain active the communication link. This does not allow for a simple and efficient verification by sending ad hoc stimuli to the Device Under Test (DUT), due to the high number of possible scenarios that can also change dynamically. In this paper we propose an innovative verification environment based on a Twin model that emulates the ideal behavior of a SpW Far-end and communicates directly with the DUT. This verification architecture, developed according to the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM), allows the user to focus only in sending and receiving payload data, since all the other exchanged information are managed automatically by the Twin model. The result is a highly reliable and easily configurable verification environment, with advantages in terms of reusability and reduced verification effort and time.