MATLAB: How to extract a single bit from signed signals in Simulink? (with no run time warnings and no HDL coder hardware cost)

Question

Basically, I want to do bit slicing on a signed integer sfixN (having bits N-1 (sign) down to 0). E.g., I want to grab bit N-1, put it in OR gate, etc.) If you try to blindly use the Extract Bits block with signed integers, the output integers are signed, so you can't get single bits.

My solution was to use a convert block with input fixdt(1, N, 0) and output fixdt(0, N, 0), (since these are integers, setting Input and output to have equal RWW or SI give the same result). This works as expected – non-negative numbers are passed through and a negative number x, comes out as x + 2^N. However, this is always flagged as an overflow.

Is this the best way to extract bits from signed numbers? If so, is there a way to turn off warnings for just this block? If not, I'd love to know the right way.

Thanks, Dara

PS: I searched and found http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/98131-how-do-i-convert-an-unsigned-integer-to-a-signed-integer-without-causing-an-overflow-or-using-typeca which isn't quite the same as my question I don't think.

Answer 1

Take a look at the "Bit Slice" block in the HDL Operations category of the HDL library. This block should accomplish what you are trying to do. To extract a single bit, simply set the upper and lower bounds of the slice to have the same value.

To access the HDL Coder library, run:

 >> hdllib

hdllib dynamically creates a new library that contains all available blocks in your install that are supported for HDL code generation.

In R2014a and later, you can also access this category, along with all HDL-supported core Simulink blocks, in the HDL Coder Simulink library in the main Simulink library browser.