MODELING CONCURRENT REAL-TIME PROCESSES USING DISCRETE EVENTS

ABSTRACT

We give a formal framework for studying real-time discrete-event systems. It describes concurrent processes as sets of possible behaviors. Compositions of processes are processes with behaviors in the intersection of the behaviors of the component processes. The interaction between processes is through signals, which are collections of events. Each event is a value-tag pair, where the tags denote time. Zeno conditions are defined and methods are given for avoiding them. Strict causality ensures determi-nacy under certain technical conditions, and delta-causality ensures the absence of Zeno conditions.